


time enough to last

by statusquo_ergo



Series: a fire in the sage's mansion [14]
Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hopeful Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23066776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: No one's to blame for the way these things happen, this fumbling through the dark and all, looking for god knows what.That doesn't really help too much.
Relationships: Mike Ross & Rachel Zane, Mike Ross/Harvey Specter
Series: a fire in the sage's mansion [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/970797
Comments: 100
Kudos: 123





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Hi, is it ok to leave you a promp? Only, I'm in the mood for some angst, so lets's say a different first meeting, where sparks really fly between the boys, but Mike is already married! Also wanted to tell you that I really love your fics, and thank you for sharing them with us<3
> 
> What a kind thing to say, thank you so much!

Delicate accents of gold sparkle along the edges of the room, heavy swaths of shimmering silk hanging from the ceiling and draped across the walls in a genuine effort at luxury by well-intentioned people who don’t have any experience pretending to be anything but exactly who they are. Soft white lighting saturates the gallery of black and white photographs in pale yellow, a terrible offense to serious art lovers everywhere but one that doesn’t even phase any of the roomful of people more interested in bragging about price tags than appreciating the difference between an authentic Cindy Sherman and a family photo of some kid waiting for the bus.

Centered on a wall big enough for much more, two strangers, dressed for the middling sort of day that finds some people walking down the street in tee shirts and cargo shorts and others in fleece jackets and blue jeans, stand facing each other in front of the steps of a brownstone, subjects accidentally captured in a good faith effort to waste film on the pin oaks lining the curb, or the staircase on the right marching up to some door well out of frame. A well-dressed young woman offers a sultry smile as she slinks past the picture, raising a glass of champagne to her lips and winking, and Harvey smiles back as he watches her walk away. She expects him to follow her, of course. She expects him to chase her satin-clad body, the twinkling flash of diamonds at her throat, the aura of forbidden attraction she tries to exude. He should do it, too; it’s good business sense, at an event like this, and might make for one hell of a night, if they decide to forget themselves for a little while.

She disappears into the crowd, and Harvey’s eyes drift back at photograph. Neatly centered between the two blurred figures, he spies another figure walking off into the distance, hidden in the dimly lit background, nearly invisible to anyone not looking for him.

“View from the Corner at Ninety-First” (1998) by Michael James Ross, the placard reads. Twenty-five thousand dollars. That kind of money won’t impress anyone here, and if Michael James Ross has done anything significant in the thirteen years since then, Harvey certainly hasn’t heard about it. Maybe he should buy the thing to confuse the hell out of his colleagues, or make his rivals think he’s losing his damn mind. Really fuck with all their heads.

“You like it, huh?”

Harvey clasps his hands behind his back. The guy crept up behind him has all the breeding of a deadbeat college dropout; maybe he works at the gallery.

“I don’t know what’s giving you that idea.”

The guy narrows his eyes at the picture and puts his hands behind his back. “It’s just that you’ve been staring at it for half an hour.”

Harvey has the distinct sense that he’s being mocked.

“What can I tell you,” he says. “After the fifteenth cocktail, they all start to look the same.”

“You’ve seen it before?”

Harvey looks off into the mingling crowd, the sea of glitter and pomposity, and clicks his tongue against his teeth. “I was talking about the parties.”

“Dude, tell me about it.” The guy sticks his hands in his pockets and grins. “You should’ve seen when IBM rented this place out, I swear to god every single one of them was wearing the exact same tux.”

“Don’t call me ‘dude,’” Harvey says idly as his attention drifts back to the photograph.

The guy nods. “Got it.”

Most people would walk away after something like that.

Harvey doesn’t think he’d feel regret, exactly, or guilt, or anything like that, if it happened. Maybe a little disappointment, the kind that comes on after a missed opportunity.

It doesn’t matter now, though, because neither of them walks away, and the companionable sort of silence that settles in between is certainly better than trying to sweet-talk potential clients or suck up to potential donors the way he should be doing.

“So,” Harvey says, once he’s reasonably certain he’s committed every detail of the photograph to memory. “You work here?”

The guy shakes his head. “It’s a symbiotic relationship.” He holds out his hand. “Mike Ross.”

Funny; Harvey’s never seen an artist visit an exhibition of his own art after the opening. Assuming there even was one. Nevertheless, Harvey takes his hand and shakes firmly.

“Ah,” he says, “the fraud.”

Mike smiles uncertainly. “Excuse me?”

“Come on.” Harvey gestures to the picture. “Twenty-five grand for this?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“You were in the right place at the right time,” Harvey says, drawing his finger in a triangle in the air to connect the three figures. “Any amateur can tell this is a candid, and I bet you didn’t even ask them if you could put their picture up in a museum.”

“Okay, first of all,” Mike says, waving toward the room behind them, “it’s not a museum, it’s a gallery. And second, I didn’t ask their permission because I took that photo for art class in high school, it didn’t really occur to me to get them to sign a liability waiver.”

“Release for use of likeness,” Harvey corrects.

“Oh, excuse me, it’s been a few years since I passed the bar.”

Harvey laughs, looking back at the picture as though it might have somehow changed in the last few minutes, or he might be able to see something he missed before, now that he knows the man behind it, however little.

It takes a moment to realize that Mike isn’t laughing along.

Harvey clears his throat.

“You passed the bar?”

Mike looks at the picture and moves his hands to his back pockets.

“This dickhead bet me I couldn’t pass it without going to law school.”

Harvey nods, uncertain of exactly what he’d expected the answer to be and how far it might’ve been from the reality he got.

“Why didn’t you?”

Mike looks at him. “What?”

Harvey glances at Mike, and then back to the picture. “Go to law school.”

What stopped you giving up this life full of things beautiful for their own sake? Leaving behind this world you’ve created with your imagination and your talent and your skill, this ever-changing thing of boundless opportunity so that you might throw yourself into an endless fight, darkness covering everything good inside you but that you might be able to shine a light on if you tried?

Imagine the lives you’d change there, in that other place.

Imagine the people you’d save.

Mike steps forward, touching his fingers to the wall beside the frame.

“I got…knocked into a different life,” he says. “I never really found my way back.”

This world doesn’t do anybody any favors, kid. Doesn’t cut anybody any slack. You make your own luck, you take responsibility for your own goddamn self.

Harvey knows how that goes.

“That why you come to these things?” he asks. “To punish yourself?”

“Or to remind myself that I dodged one hell of a bullet,” Mike says. “And see how many suckers are willing to spend money on any of this crap.”

Harvey nods. “I gotta say, I admire your self-awareness.”

Mike puts his hands on his hips and puffs out his chest, and Harvey laughs under his breath.

“Hey,” he says. “Thank you.”

Dropping his hands, Mike laughs a little bit, too.

“For what?”

Harvey shakes his head.

For rocking the boat, maybe. For breaking the dullness and the drear that blurs the days together, that makes every gilded edge and twinkling diamond look like so much unremarkable frivolity. For being something unexpected, for being something new.

“Finding your way here.”

Mike claps him on the shoulder and grins.

“Right back at you.”

Harvey smiles, and holds out his hand.

“Harvey Specter.”

Mike takes it and shakes it firmly.

“Nice to meet you.”

\---

The days come and go, morning noon and night. July turns to August, and then September, sticky summer weather sliding into freezing autumn nights, and Harvey lives his life as he always has, taking the fights that come his way and seeking them out when nothing does him the favor. He wins more than he loses, which is about all he can ask for, and his dreams have a somber sort of silence to them that always makes him think he’s awake while he sleeps.

Every now and again, Donna asks if he’s alright, promising to take his word for it when he says he’s distracted by casework or tired from too many late nights out at one bar or another. She’s doing her best to figure out what’s really wrong, quietly digging into his personal life the way she does, but he doesn’t think she’s going to get this one, this time.

She smiles her sad apologies, and he smiles back and forgives her her indiscretions. Neither of them says a word about any of it, which is just as well.

In December, Harvey goes to a benefit gala at the Museum of the City of New York and spends three hours standing in front of a back and white photograph of a man in a suit walking past Katz’s Deli on East Houston Street, and nobody says a word to him all night long.

He can leave whenever he’s through.

\---

Every now and again, Harvey thinks about going back to that gallery.

Not for any particular reason; Mike won’t be there, and even if he is, what’s going to happen? They met once, they chatted for awhile. Just because he’s been on Harvey’s mind is no reason to think that Harvey might’ve been on his.

It’s a little bit of a connection, is all. A little bit of a chance, no matter how small.

A little bit of fantasy.

Harvey goes to galas and fundraisers, networking events and cocktail parties. He solicits new clients and panders to old ones, and he lives his life as he always has, as he imagines he always will. Every now and again, he finds himself at another gallery, a different one, and every time, he wonders if maybe this will be the time it happens again.

Every time, he tells himself not to be disappointed, and most of the time, it works.

It makes sense, in a way, that it’s not at a gallery event that it finally does happen. Something about the universe balancing itself out, setting things to rights.

“Harvey?”

His voice is a little deeper than Harvey remembers, a little familiar but not enough to place. Harvey turns with a smile stapled to his face, preparing one of a thousand versions of oh-how-nice-to-see-you-again that this guy might or might not buy, might or might not cut him a break and pretend to believe, all of it freezing and falling away the instant he sees the man standing beside him.

“Mike Ross,” he says, his eyes creasing up at the edges and pulling the corner of his mouth up into the beginnings of a smile.

Mike claps him on the shoulder, brazenly intimate and comfortably familiar. “Hey,” he says. “I wasn’t sure I was ever gonna see you again.”

Harvey’s smile widens some as he tries not to laugh aloud. “It was nice while it lasted.”

Mike grins and drops his hand, and Harvey reaches up to grip his arm, the wool jacket just a little too rough on his skin.

“What’ve you been up to?”

“God, don’t get me started.”

Harvey squeezes his arm and lets go. “Rough night?”

“Hey,” Mike says, making a show of looking around the room over Harvey’s shoulder, “I’m just glad they’re serving alcohol at this thing.”

Beauty for its own sake can only get a guy so far. Yeah, Harvey knows how that goes; he knows enough to take what he can get, and to take it wherever he can get it.

“All this atmosphere stifling your creativity?”

Mike snorts. “This ain’t my first rodeo, pal.”

Harvey quirks his eyebrows.

“Boy howdy.”

Mike grins.

The party murmurs along around them, in front and behind them, quiet conversation and put-on laughter, the misplaced thread of a classical violin quartet. Mike takes a couple of steps to the side as though he doesn’t know quite what to do with himself, and Harvey believes him when he says he’s done this before, that he knows this world to move in it, but that doesn’t mean some piece isn’t missing, that all of this isn’t enough, could never be enough.

“It’s really nothing.”

These things often are.

“You got anything better to do?” Harvey prompts.

Mike taps his palms absently against his thighs. “I had a sale lined up for eighty grand, and this asshole texts me this morning to say he’s ‘no longer interested.’”

Harvey narrows his eyes. “You’re sure it was him?”

“Yeah, I uh, I called him to confirm.”

Of course he did.

His mind begins to wander as Harvey murmurs a nonsense string of sympathetic noises, his eyes going a little out of focus. That kind of money was a lot to him, too, a lifetime ago. Hell, his ego would take a hit now for nothing more than the audacity of it all, getting caught up in this guy’s arrogant stupidity.

“Why don’t you sue?” he asks when Mike doesn’t go on. “Breach of contract, you’ll be able to take him for a whole lot more than eighty thousand dollars.”

“Yeah, I wish.” Mike curls his lips disdainfully. “This business isn’t really big on the whole ‘notice of intent to purchase’ thing.”

It should be. Mike should know better, Mike should fight for it. Maybe they made some kind of verbal agreement for Harvey to exploit to threaten this fucker into a coughing up a half million, maybe he can convince Mike, Mike, who passed the bar on a dare and spends his free time hanging around lawyers at their most desperate, their most needy, maybe he can show him how to fight harder for himself. Maybe he can find out why no one else is stepping up into his corner to take the hits instead.

“And I know this kind of shit happens all the time,” Mike says abruptly, turning to face Harvey as he stares bitterly at some indistinct spot between them. “I know I shouldn’t be surprised. I know it’s my own damn fault, I know things could be—so much worse, I could be, I could be alone, I could be out on my ass, and I’m not, and I should be grateful for everything I have, I should be grateful that this isn’t going to make or break me, but this was gonna— I was, I was finally going to be able to contribute something again, I was going to be _useful,_ to…help out a little. Or even just be able to say that I _can._ ”

Harvey should say something. Anything. He should be kind, and consoling. He should tell Mike that it isn’t his fault that there are terrible people in the world, that trying to put a little beauty out into the darkness and the gloom might be a fool’s errand but it’s a battle worth fighting to the end, that at least he’s doing _something,_ and it makes him so much better than Harvey’s ever been.

He should tell him every good thing he’s ever known.

It’s not a long list.

Harvey pats his breast pocket to feel for his checkbook.

“So how many of these pictures here are yours?” he asks, his gaze drifting across the poorly-lit walls.

“Don’t,” Mike says, “don’t do that. Don’t…pity-fund me.”

Harvey shakes his head. “Look, Mike, if you need money, I want to help you.”

“I just said I didn’t.” Shoving his hand into his hair, Mike paces in a tight circle and closes his eyes. “I’m just sick of feeling like a trophy husband, you know?”

Harvey starts to raise his hand to his mouth before he remembers he isn’t holding a drink.

“You’re married?”

“Hm?” Mike looks over at him. “How did you think I kept getting into these parties?”

“You mean it isn’t just your dry wit and boyish good looks?” Harvey sticks his hands into his pockets and steps up to Mike’s side to look over the crowd scattered across the room. “Which one’s yours?”

“Rachel Zane.” Mike gestures vaguely toward a small group gathered by a statue of a woman clad in an elaborately draped dress and resting her cheek in her hand. “She’s a junior associate at Pearson Hardman.”

No kidding.

“Small world,” Harvey says.

Mike hums softly.

Sure, Harvey knows how it is. These things never seem to end up as good as they could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Why take the bar?”  
> “This dickhead bet me I couldn’t pass it without going to law school.”  
> —Harvey and Mike, “Pilot” (s01e01)
> 
> “If you want this job so much, why didn’t you just go to law school?”  
> “When I was in college, it was my dream to be a lawyer. I needed some money and Trevor convinced me to memorize this math test and sell it. Turns out we sold it to the dean’s daughter. I lost my scholarship, I got kicked out of school, I I got knocked into a different life. And I have been wishing for a way back ever since.”  
> —Harvey and Mike, “Pilot”
> 
> [Katz's Delicatessen](https://katzsdelicatessen.com/), at 205 East Houston Street in Manhattan, is a New York City institution established in 1888.
> 
> Feel free to say hi on [tumblr](https://statusquoergo.tumblr.com)!


	2. Chapter 2

Harvey could go down to the bullpen and meet Rachel Zane, if he wanted. He doesn’t have to; he could ask around instead, to get a sense of her reputation. Her work record, her professional ethics, her drive and her motivation. The general impression she seems to leave on people.

What makes her so good for Mike Ross.

He doesn’t need to meet her. He doesn’t need to know her. He probably shouldn’t, thinking about it practically. Rationally. It’s none of his business, and he doesn’t really care.

Late at night, in the cavernous darkness of his empty apartment, Harvey curls up on the sofa in front of the glowing embers in the fireplace and scrolls through his phone for every mention, every hint of Mike Ross he can find. Every gallery where his work has ever been on display, every show he has coming up, every picture he’s ever sold, every phase and recurring theme and undertone running through his art that might in the right light offer some clue, some vague suggestion of that life he left behind, the world he used to be a part of that he can throw over himself in gaudy silk and then cast off as soon as the party’s over, as soon as he wants to go back to his real self, saying only what he means, playing by the rules that he invents and setting his own score.

Michael James Ross (b. 1981), son of Nina ( _née_ Holland) and James Ross, deceased. First official showing at the Robert Mann Gallery as an “emerging artist” in 2004, part of an exhibition headlined by Julie Blackmon. No commercial success to speak of. Married his fiancée of three years Rachel Elizabeth Zane in 2008. No children.

Harvey sets his phone down on the cushions and watches the fire finish dying. It takes a few minutes.

He picks his phone back up again.

Michael James Ross (b. 1981).

\---

At ten fourteen in the morning, Jessica calls Harvey into her office to assign him to the team handling a case in defense of some corporate conglomerate against a mounting class action that he’s pretty sure the plaintiffs really deserve to win. Swearing she’s not acting out of spite, she directs him to draft an associate to assist him for the duration, only showing a little bit of surprise when he offers up Rachel’s name without a second thought.

“I’m impressed,” she says, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms over her chest. “I figured you were always too busy thinking about yourself to learn any of their names.”

Harvey smirks and taps his fingertips against her desk. “I’m full of surprises.”

For a minute, he thinks she’s going to say something more, something warning or derisive to put him back in his place, the way she does even when she doesn’t expect him to listen. That’s just the way things are, between the two of them.

She ends up dismissing him in silence, and he goes back to his office to call Rachel up from the bullpen and hand over her new assignment without any prelude or fanfare or explanation. She takes it affably and only protests their client’s abysmal ethics three times over the next six months, and he’s about eighty-seven percent sure she doesn’t throw the case on purpose.

Some people have a way of finding a light to shine in the dark.

\---

From time to time, when work starts getting to be overwhelming the way it sometimes does, Harvey leaves the office and abandons his car on the side of the road to wander the streets, uptown or down, until he finds himself somewhere familiar, somewhere safe to collect his thoughts and catch his breath. Usually he ends up at a bar, maybe a lounge or a restaurant; sometimes he makes his way to the park, Central or Riverside, and gets himself lost on purpose until he stumbles out the other side and has to look for something he can recognize.

One night, he goes back to that first gallery, even though Mike’s art is gone from the walls and he doesn’t have any particular interest in the exhibition of photographs of staircases and handrails that they’re advertising in the lobby. The next time out, he plans a little better, registering for a viewing at the Robert Mann Gallery seven years too late but that at least gets him out of the office around four, which isn’t too bad, in the grand scheme of things.

Every day, he scours the internet for word of Mike’s next exhibition; every day, he tells himself that he’s surprised when he doesn’t find anything, and every day, he believes it a little more.

The world isn’t ready for Mike Ross.

No one’s really to blame.

\---

It’s nearly a year to the day, a year after that first meeting, when it happens again. Early July, after the Fourth but near enough to it that plenty of people still haven’t managed to drag themselves back from vacation, Harvey walks out the front door of the office onto East Fifty-Third and right into Mike Ross jogging up the front steps, like it happens all the time.

He should say something. Anything. He should call out, ask Mike how he’s been, how he is. What he’s looking forward to, what he’s looking for.

Mike looks up and catches his eye, and he smiles as big as Harvey remembers.

“Hey!”

He reaches out and grabs Harvey’s arm, and Harvey smiles back and doesn’t know exactly what to do with his hands.

“Harvey Specter,” Mike says, sliding his hand up to Harvey’s shoulder before he lets it fall. “I was just thinking about you.”

Harvey cocks his eyebrows. “Bullshit.”

“I was!” Mike looks distantly off to the left and then back at Harvey with an awkward grin. “I always think about trying to call you when I come here.”

So how many times is that?

How many galleries, how many art openings has Harvey been to hoping, just hoping to run into him? Knowing he won’t, pretending that he could. That he might. That they might.

And Mike’s been here how many times, and Harvey had no idea. Here to take his wife out for lunch, or meet her after work, or hang around with the associates, pretending he can live two lives at once, pretending he never got knocked out of that other one, whatever it was.

How many times.

“No kidding.”

Mike shrugs.

“You make a hell of an impression.”

Yeah. He could say the same.

Harvey looks over Mike’s shoulder to the hot dog cart, the base pleasure he treats himself to on the days when he’s feeling low. Seems kind of silly now, a touch out of place.

“Hey,” he says, “you want to grab a bite?”

Mike glances behind him to the office doors, the bustling chaos of the glass-walled lobby. “You don’t have anything better to do?”

Harvey laughs.

“Come on,” he says, pressing his hand to Mike’s back and turning him around to face the stairs. “My treat.”

“Oh, well, how am I supposed to say no to that?”

Harvey pats his hand against Mike’s shoulder blade. “That’s the idea.”

Mike smiles down at his shoes.

They walk aimlessly, the muggy air making their shirts stick to their skin and sweat drip down their spines, and this wouldn’t be such a bad way to spend a day, Harvey thinks. Wandering the city streets, imagining he can see them through Mike’s eyes, pretending he can see the world he tries to create with his pictures, the places and the things he tries to show to everybody else, even though they might not understand. Even if they can’t.

Mike bumps their shoulders together.

“So how’ve you been?”

Harvey takes a slow breath.

“Getting by.”

“That bad, huh?”

You don’t know the half of it.

“What can I say,” Harvey says. “It keeps me off the streets.”

“That is so weird, I never pinned you as a pusher.”

“My darkest secret.”

Mike sticks his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts and grins.

“I believe it,” he says. “But you’re doing okay?”

Am I?

I’m looking for something I never knew I was missing. I’m trying to figure out where I went wrong, how I could have gone so far off the tracks when I’ve done everything right.

Trying to figure out how it all started with you.

“Can’t complain.”

Mike nods.

“Good.”

Harvey purses his lips and squints up at the overcast sky.

“How about you?”

Mike slows his pace a little, just enough to set them out of sync, and Harvey wonders for a second if they’ve passed some place he wants to stop in except that the only things around are a CVS pharmacy and a Santander Bank ATM that’ll probably end up costing him an extra two fifty if he wants to make a withdrawal.

“I’m fine,” Mike says. “Getting by.”

Harvey hums a low note and makes a point of matching their strides.

“Any gallery shows coming up?” he asks, as though he doesn’t already know the answer.

Mike smiles tightly, and it occurs to Harvey that he probably should have known better than to ask.

“I’m about five minutes away from applying for a tax ID and setting up a stand at Columbus Circle.”

“Come on,” Harvey says before he can think better of it, biting his tongue when Mike shakes his head.

“I made about a thousand dollars last year,” he says. “And I gotta tell you, the whole starving artist thing isn’t nearly as fun once you’re out of your twenties.”

Everybody has to grow up sometime. Everybody has to become a realist, everybody has to leave that fantasy behind.

Harvey rolls his shoulders and coughs in the back of his throat.

“It’s not so great when you’re in your twenties, either.”

Mike hums.

“Yeah, but at least when you’re a kid, it’s easier to pretend.”

We all dream our own illusions.

The heavy summer air beats down, suddenly pungent with the unmistakable stench of horse shit, and Harvey stops to push open the door to Bobby Van’s Steakhouse as Mike rubs his nose with his fist.

“This place is so out of my price range,” Mike mutters, running his hand down the front of his tee shirt.

“Hey,” Harvey mutters back. “Shut up.”

Mike smiles and follows the maître d’ to a table meant for three or four, sliding into the booth seat when Harvey puts his hand on the back of the chair in front of him.

“So,” Harvey says, pulling the chair out to sit down. “Tell me about you.”

Mike sets his napkin down in his lap with a smirk. “What is this, a job interview?”

“Not unless you got a law degree I don’t know about.”

“Ah, touché.” Mike drums his fingers on the tabletop for a few beats before he clasps his hands together and sets them down behind his plate. “What do you want to know?”

Let’s start with everything, and work our way backwards.

Harvey unfolds his napkin and lays it across his lap.

“You always wanted to be a photographer?”

That’s a mean and terrible thing to ask, and Harvey is a horrible and deceptive person for asking it. “What happened to that other life you were living?” he might have said, or maybe “How many times did you have to tell yourself that you like the way things are before you started to believe it?”

Mike takes a drink of water and sets the glass down right next to his silverware.

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be a guitar player,” he says with a noncommittal indifference that doesn’t invite followup questions. “My mom had an old guitar she’d gotten from some friend of hers after college, and my grandmother got me a book of beginner lessons for my birthday one year, and I taught myself.”

“Yeah?” Harvey says. “What happened?”

Mike shrugs. “Nothing. I still have the guitar, I still play sometimes, but it’s a hobby, you know? I don’t think I ever really wanted to make a career out of it, but that’s what everyone always asks kids, right, what do you want to be when you grow up, and when you only really have one hobby, you just…default. I mean everyone has that thing when they’re little, right? The astronaut phase or whatever? The rock star phase?”

We’ve all been there. We’ve all had to get it out of our system.

Harvey sits up straighter in his chair and sets his shoulder back.

“I guess so,” he says. “So photography came next?”

Mike’s gaze darts away as he digs his nails into the tablecloth, scratching over the corner of the table before his hands come to rest on his knees.

“Law school came next,” he says, looking back up into Harvey’s eyes. “When I was eleven, my parents were killed by a drunk driver, and the guy’s lawyer basically conned my grandmother out of a fair settlement; and when I got old enough to understand what had happened, I decided I never wanted that to happen to anyone else, so I was going to go to law school and become the best goddamn lawyer anyone had ever seen.”

Harvey sets his hands in his lap and twists his fingers in his napkin to keep from saying something stupid.

Some people live their lives for all the right reasons. Some people know how to be good.

Harvey tries to be kind.

“Sounds nice,” he says.

Mike laughs tersely.

“Might’ve been,” he says. “Except my grandmother barely had enough money to send me to city college, much less, you know, Harvard, and by the time I figured out that selling test answers wasn’t really the best way to earn some extra scratch, I’d pretty much missed the window.”

It’s both surprising and not, and Harvey tries not to look too empathetic, being that Mike probably got what was coming to him.

“What happened?”

Mike shrugs. “I sold a math test to the dean’s daughter,” he says. “He found out, he expelled me. But you know the funny thing,” he goes on wryly, “is that I actually found out on that same day that I’d been accepted to transfer to Harvard on a full scholarship, so I mean the timing really…could not have been worse.”

He has a smile on his face that startles Harvey with its sincerity, like maybe it isn’t just a lie he tells himself to feel better that he loves the way things are, that he’s happy it all ended up the way it did. That he believes those people who say that everything happens for a reason.

All those doors that he closed on himself, it was all for the best.

Sure. Why bother to think anything else? Wondering what might have been, where he might be now if only.

Harvey moves his knife and his fork to opposite sides of his plate.

“Then photography?”

Mike taps his fingers against the table. “Pretty much. That was when I picked up my camera again, anyway.”

“Mm-huh.” Harvey’s eyes dart down to the menu he hasn’t opened yet, then back to Mike. “Is that how you met Rachel?”

Mike smirks. “Not exactly.”

Harvey arches one of his eyebrows and rests his chin on his fist, and Mike mimics his expression in a way that can only be described as parody.

“I like to read,” he says. “Once I read something, I understand it, and once I understand it, I never forget it. And one thing I figured out while all my friends were cramming for their MCATs and shit is that a lot of really smart people really, really don’t like tests.”

Dropping his hand to the table, Harvey sits back in his chair. “You sold the answers to the MCAT?”

“Only once.” Mike twists his lips into an ironic grin. “I know the LSAT well enough to get any score I want, so I started taking it for money. The higher the score, the higher the fee.”

Harvey tries not to be too impressed by Mike’s cautious forethought. The scheme is underhanded, to be sure, devious and disrespectful to the very institution Harvey himself is meant to represent, to the art of law itself, but to have handled it so carefully, to have gotten away with it for so long…

Well. It’s a hell of a thing.

“You took Rachel’s LSATs?” Harvey asks with the abrupt realization that any number of liars and cheaters might have managed to finagle their way into the ranks of Pearson Hardman over the years. Surely she can’t be the first, but maybe she can be the last.

“What?” Mike frowns. “No, god, I took them for a friend of hers and she threatened to turn me into the Law School Admission Council.”

As well she should have done.

Harvey thinks maybe he should be prouder of her for having her head on straight. Maybe more upset that she didn’t follow through.

Of course, then where would we be?

“What stopped her?” he asks.

Mike raises his hand dismissively. “I said I’d tutor her for free if she didn’t,” he says. “She’s— I mean you know she’s smart, but she doesn’t test very well. I wasn’t teaching her logical reasoning skills so much as like, how to take the LSATs.”

“Yeah?” Harvey grins. “How’d you know she’d fall for that?”

Mike grins back. “You think I would’ve survived in that business for five years without being able to figure out someone’s price?”

Without instinct, you mean. Without learning how to play the system. Without learning how to read people.

Without knowing how to break down the goddamn wall.

Harvey clears his throat to keep from doing something stupid.

“This place does a pretty good filet mignon,” he says, and feels like kicking himself.

Mike puts his hand down on top of his menu, his thumb under the front cover as though he’s about to open it but hasn’t fully committed to it yet, and Harvey bites down on the inside of his cheek and wishes they’d thought to go to the sort of place that he could leave suddenly without making a scene.

This seemed like such a nice idea, at the time. These things always do when they start out.

“Good thing I’ve got nowhere to be,” Mike says, the corner of his mouth quirking up like they have some mutual understanding about what’s going on, some joke they’re both in on that goes without saying.

It’s probably not completely true, that he’s not supposed to be busy somewhere else. Then again, maybe that’s the funny part.

Harvey smiles and holds out the wine list.

“Glad to hear it.”

I am.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “How can you know all that?”  
> “I told you. I like to read. And once I read something, I understand it, and once I understand it, I never forget it.”  
> —Harvey and Mike, “Pilot” (s01e01)
> 
> “Let me tell you something. This isn’t elementary school, this is hard work. Long hours. High pressure. I need a grown goddamn man.”  
> “You give me this and I will work as hard as it takes to school those Harvard douches and become the best lawyer you have ever seen.”  
> —Harvey and Mike, “Pilot”
> 
> “Stop smoking now, you’ll be fine, I assume that’s all the drugs you do.”  
> “How do you know that?”  
> “You read books, I read people.”  
> —Harvey and Mike, “Pilot”
> 
> “You once told me what to do when your back’s against the wall.”  
> “Break the goddamn thing down.”  
> “That’s right.”  
> —Louis and Harvey, “War” (s02e16)
> 
> [Robert Mann Gallery](http://www.robertmann.com/) is an appointment-viewing photography gallery in New York City which showcases both vintage and contemporary art by emerging and mid- to late-career artists.
> 
> [Bobby Van’s](https://bobbyvans.com/steakhouse/54th-street) is a steakhouse with several locations in New York, including one on East 54th street, which is about a block and a half from 601 Lexington, the building that houses Pearson Hardman.
> 
> The LSAT (Law School Admission Test) isn’t actually a law exam so much as a reading comprehension and logical reasoning test. No knowledge of legalese or legal precedent is required to pass it.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s an accident, the first time it happens.

The security guard downstairs misunderstands the request, is the thing, so when Mike says he’s here to visit Rachel Zane, um, yeah, she’s Harvey Specter’s associate at Pearson Hardman, the guard looks up Harvey’s name first, and when Harvey gets the call that a Mister Mike Ross is here to see you, sir, he doesn’t think anything of it but to say “Yeah, okay,” except of course Mike isn’t here to see Harvey, he’s here to see Rachel, so when he gets through the checkpoint to the elevators, he goes straight to the bullpen, and come to think of it, Harvey isn’t sure Mike even knows where his office is, much less that it’s within walking distance of Rachel’s cubicle.

It’s an accident, is the point.

Harvey’s got a very busy afternoon lined up, anyway, and it more or less slips his mind to wonder where Mike is when he never shows up. He’s got too much work to do, too many phone calls to make and documents to review and cordially threatening emails to write, and he doesn’t have time to dwell on little things like social calls.

Late at night, standing over the stove and stirring a big pot of simmering water with a thick wooden spoon to keep the penne from sticking to the metal, he thinks in hindsight that he might have been sort of disappointed, even if he didn’t realize it at the time.

Half an hour later, pouring the leftover pasta into an overlarge Tupperware container and licking vodka sauce off his thumb, he wonders if maybe it wasn’t disappointment at all. Maybe it was hope, or anger, or loneliness. It’s hard to remember. Maybe it was nothing, maybe he’s making it all up.

That’s probably it.

\---

A beautiful woman named Genevieve Bassington—but not one of _those_ Bassingtons, she says as though that’s supposed to mean something—approaches Harvey at a benefit gala for some thinly veiled premise or other and suggests that they make themselves scarce because these things are always so stuffy, aren’t they, and a man of his stature just has… _so_ much more to offer to a woman of hers.

Harvey starts to follow her toward the corner of the room, or maybe toward the door, except that the moment he takes a step, he realizes he has a tiny rock in his shoe that’s pressing right up against the ball of his foot.

“Do you have a camera?” he asks, stopping to stomp his heel against the floor as her smile turns indecent.

“You’re a naughty boy,” she purrs.

He thinks that maybe he ought to explain that he just wants to see if he can take a picture of her that makes her look as lonely on paper as she sounds in real life. If it’s possible to put that thought to paper, to show it off and make others understand it the same way he does, to let them see the world through his eyes for a minute.

“You don’t know the half of it,” he says as she looks over her shoulder to catch him in her smoky gaze, crooking her finger and swaying her shapely hips on her way to the foyer.

It just so happens that Harvey’s apartment is only a few blocks away, but he isn’t sure whether she knows that somehow or she’s just an optimistic sort of person. Not that it’s particularly important; she seems like she’s used to getting what she wants, and as it turns out, the sex is pretty good, so he won’t hold it against her.

The next morning, she tells him not to make her breakfast and leaves without saying goodbye, and Harvey takes his laptop out onto the balcony and searches eBay for framed prints of vintage guitars.

It’s a living.

\---

It’s not exactly an accident, the second time. Not exactly on purpose, but not quite an accident, either; he doesn’t really know what to call it.

What happens is that the security guard downstairs calls up to Harvey’s office to announce that a Mister Mike Ross is here to see him, very specifically him, and Harvey, having relatively little work to do today, buzzes him up with full awareness of his actions and a vaguely nervous uncertainty as to whether Mike is actually going to make an appearance. A couple of minutes later, one of the receptionists sitting out by the elevators calls Donna, and Donna calls Harvey, and a few seconds after that, Mike walks down the hall much more stiffly than Harvey has ever seen him move before until he sees Donna and relaxes considerably, and Harvey doesn’t know what to do with the fact that Mike is neither doing his best to suck up to her, nor trying to flirt with her, as people tend to in such situations.

In any event, Mike smiles wide as he walks into Harvey’s office, and he’s here for one reason and one reason only, and that reason is to see Harvey, and that’s a pretty nice feeling, even if it took awhile to get there.

“Hey,” Mike says. “I’m, uh, sorry I didn’t call first, but so you remember the last time I saw you, when we had lunch that time? And I said I come here a lot?”

Harvey cross his legs and leans back in his chair.

“I do.”

Mike shrugs exaggeratedly, raising his open hands.

“Well, I’m here, and I…figured I’d come and say hi. To you. Even though you probably have lots of important work to do, so I’m gonna go, but I’ll probably see you around.”

Stepping backwards, he lifts his hand to his forehead in some kind of half-assed salute, and Harvey laughs.

“Mike,” he says. “I’m glad you came by.”

Mike grins and stops walking away.

“Cool.”

Harvey laughs again.

“Cool.”

The moment pauses in an awkward sort of way unsuited to the two of them, and Mike takes a hesitant step forward toward Harvey’s desk until his eyes alight on the wall to the left and he stops short right in the middle of the floor.

“Ho-ly shit.”

Harvey frowns and follows his eyeline.

Oh. Oh, well. Yeah, that makes sense; Mike being an artist and all, it was bound to happen.

“I’m full of whimsy,” he deadpans.

“I can see that.” Mike walks past the little glass conference table in the corner of the room, up to the satirically grotesque painting hung over the decorative side table where Harvey never has to worry about looking at it unless he means to.

“Tell me this is one of yours.”

Ha. Pull the other one.

Harvey leans back in his chair. “No, sorry,” he says. “Actually, my mother painted it.”

“No kidding.” Mike leans in to inspect the brushwork more closely. “So I guess you come by the whole art critic thing honestly.”

What a funny way to put it.

“I’d like to think my tastes have matured beyond my formative years.”

Mike’s lips quirk up at the corners as he hums under his breath. “I take it you and your mom don’t really see eye to eye on this kind of stuff.”

You poor thing.

You can keep a secret, can’t you, honey? You can cover your ears and close your eyes and pretend everything is how we’d like it to be instead of how it is. You know how erase these mistakes we’ve made, you know how to paint over our past with shimmer and gold, don’t you, dear?

You poor thing.

Harvey coughs into his fist.

“No,” he says. “Not really.”

Mike rocks his head back and forth.

Harvey presses his lips together and breathes out quietly.

“I’m impressed,” he says after a moment. “Donna didn’t scare you off.”

“Oh,” Mike says, taking a step back from the wall, “yeah, she and Rachel are friends, we’ve met a couple times.”

The world doesn’t end with you, understand?

Yeah. You get it. You know.

“To be honest with you, I was coming here to see Rachel,” he says, “but then when I was downstairs, I figured, you know, if I’m gonna call you sometime, I might as well…do it.”

If you get a chance, you might as well take it and run.

Harvey smiles.

“It’s good to see you.”

Mike smiles back.

“Yeah,” he says. “You too.”

We’re in the right place at the wrong time, is all this is. Acting out our little absurdities, waiting for the coincidences to align.

Keep your feet on the ground.

\---

One night, when life has gotten a bit too overwhelming, the way it sometimes does, Harvey leaves the office long after dark and asks Ray to drive him to Atlantic City. Sitting in the backseat in his pressed tuxedo, Harvey looks out the window at the passing lights and pockets of suburbia and considers whether he’s more in the mood to win a lot of money or to lose a lot of money at the tables tonight.

Jessica would tell him not to go, if he asked. She would tell him that she’s worried about him, that she doesn’t know what his problem is but he’d better figure it out and he’d better do it fast, and then he’d better solve it before he gets her into any trouble. She would tell him he’s working too hard, or not hard enough, and he would tell her he’s fine, and she would give him that disapproving look she has and send him on his way, and he’d go home and think about going out anyway and end up going to bed and staying up all night reading about the History of the City of New York even though he already knows just about everything there is to know.

Ray pulls up in front of the Borgata Casino, and Harvey steps out of the car and smooths down his lapels.

Donna would ask him why he was there. She would tell him that he can’t go on this way, that nothing is going to change unless he changes it, that whatever his problem is, he has to suck it up and get past it, over it or around it, before he does something he’ll regret. She would tell him that she knows it’s not something he wants to hear but she’s worried about him, and she’s trying to help him, like she always does, trying to look out for him and to save him from himself. He would say he doesn’t need her help, even though he doesn’t really mean it, even though what he really means is “I’m afraid of something I don’t understand and this isn’t something I can put out into the world with words,” and she would get angry, even though she thinks she knows everything he wants to say but won’t, and she’d tell him that the next time he needs help, he shouldn’t come running to her, and he would say fine, and she would go, and then so would he, and the day after tomorrow, they’ll pretend it never happened at all and go on living the way they always have.

Harvey walks through the front doors and heads straight for the poker room.

Mike would ask if he could come along.

Would he? Maybe. Wouldn’t he? Maybe not. Maybe he’d tell Harvey he’s being stupid, maybe he’d tell him to go home.

Harvey sits down at an open table and drops five hundred dollars down in front of the croupier.

Maybe he’ll break even.

\---

The third time it happens, they do their best to call it a misunderstanding.

“Hey,” Mike says, breezing past Donna’s desk and letting himself into Harvey’s office as though he’s been there a hundred times before. Harvey looks up with a grin as though he’s been waiting for this, as though he’s been looking forward to it for days, this thing he had no right or reason to expect.

“What’re you doing here?” he asks, casting the weight off his back, the ice and the snow, while Mike stands in the middle of the floor and smiles like everything is right with the world, even though they both know that has never been true.

“I was in the neighborhood,” Mike says, which may or may not be completely honest, “and I figured I’d see if Rachel wanted to go out and grab a bite.”

Harvey taps a pen against his desk. “The bullpen’s downstairs.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mike says, walking the rest of the way across the floor to the windows to sit at a diagonal angle on the stupid chaise lounge chair that everyone always looks at but no one ever uses. “She’s finishing up a brief, we’re gonna go out when she’s done. Juice Generation.”

Harvey nods, dreaming of all the things he could say, all the questions he could ask. Why did you come to see me, Mike? What is it that you want me to do? Do I need to know, or is it enough that things are the way they are?

He sits back in his chair, smiling as his thoughts begin to slow, to stop rushing for a moment as an aimless peace comes to rest inside of him for a moment, just long enough for him to hold. Mike smiles back, contentedly out of place, and drapes himself over the leather as though he’s forgotten that this is a way station on the road to other places and other things.

A gentle knock sounds at the door, and Donna braces her hand on the frame as she leans in.

“Mike,” she says, “Rachel just called, she’s ready whenever you are.”

“Okay,” Mike says. “Thanks.”

Donna smiles at him, and then at Harvey, and then she goes.

Mike pushes himself back in his seat and crosses his legs.

“Thanks for letting me hang out here,” he says.

It probably took him about as long to get here from the bullpen as he spent sitting on the lounge.

Harvey nods.

“Anytime.”

Just as you please.

Mike looks at the door for a moment before he stands.

“Hey,” he says thoughtfully, “you wanna give me your number?”

You wanna stop tripping over ourselves in the dark? You wanna stop believing our dumb luck is going to be enough to save us?

Harvey lowers his gaze and places his hand on his desk to cover his phone as though he hasn’t decided yet, as though he isn’t immediately certain of the answer.

“Seems like a pretty one-sided deal,” he says. “What am I getting out of it?”

Mike grins.

“You wanna swap numbers?”

Harvey closes his fingers around his phone.

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

Putting his hand to his pocket, Mike looks around uncertainly until he spies a legal pad beside Harvey’s laptop, leaning over to snatch a pen out of a mesh holder full of them and scribbling his number on the topmost page.

“So gimme a call,” he says. “Or, text or whatever.”

Harvey slips his phone into his breast pocket.

“I just might.”

Mike offers up one last smile and goes along without a backwards glance, and Harvey watches him the whole way out.

Donna looks up when Mike bids her farewell and goes back to her work as though he was never there.

A little while later, the intercom lights up, and Harvey takes a deep breath and lets out a long sigh.

“You didn’t buzz him in.”

Through the glass walls, he watches Donna tuck her hair behind her ear and flip it back behind her neck.

“No, I didn’t.”

He folds his hands behind his head.

“Why?”

What does she see that he doesn’t? What does she think she’s figuring out that he hasn’t said, what has she found that she hasn’t told him?

Looking over her shoulder, she gives him a little shrug.

“I thought you could use a friend.”

Harvey turns to look out the window, the city wandering around below.

Maybe I could.

“Thanks.”

Humming softly, she hangs up the phone, and Harvey looks out the window.

Take away these acts of kindness, and what will we have left to remember? Nothing but our needs and desires.

Harvey takes out his phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I made your favorite. Linguine with pesto.”  
> “My favorite is penne vodka, but the larger issue is, what have you done with Rachel?”  
> —Oliver and Mike, “Bad Man” (s07e12)
> 
> “His artwork was chosen to show that he has a whimsical side with a truly wicked sense of humor.”  
> —Gabriel Macht, “[‘Suits’: Inside Harvey Specter’s mind and office](https://ew.com/article/2011/08/18/suits-harvey-spector/),” Entertainment Weekly, August 18, 2011
> 
> “I don’t feel good.”  
> “Oh, yeah, you’re burning up. Let’s get you to bed. And let’s not tell Dad about cousin Scott. Okay? ‘Cause they don't get along. Come on. You poor thing.”  
> —Harvey and Lily, “Hitting Home” (s05e07)
> 
> [Borgata Casino](https://www.theborgata.com/) is a resort casino in Atlantic City. It’s definitely not the one Mike and Harvey went to in “All In” (s02e06), but it is very popular and it is very large and it does have at least one poker room.


	4. Chapter 4

Nothing has to change.

Harvey knows that. He tells it to himself as he answers Mike’s text, and as he saves Mike’s number in his contacts list, and as he texts back to confirm: Nothing has to change. He knows that. He does.

It might. It could.

It won’t, though. It won’t because it doesn’t have to.

Harvey gets into the habit of leaving his phone out on his desk during work hours, trying not to glance at the display too often. Not that the ringer is set to silent or anything, but he might’ve been on a call when Mike messaged him, or talking to Donna, or in the hall, or not paying attention, and it doesn’t hurt to check every now and again, just to be sure. Every once in awhile.

Mike writes to him some days, but not all of them.

One day, a Tuesday, he texts Harvey that he’s going to pick Rachel up from work so they can go to a gallery in SoHo that he can’t remember the name of but that a friend of his recommended they check out because the owner is looking to feature undiscovered artists in an upcoming show and Mike probably has a low enough profile to qualify, even though he’s been featured in galleries before alongside such established and prestigious artists as Julie Blackmon, and Irving Penn that one time, and maybe he and Harvey could meet up for a little bit before they have to go.

Harvey would’ve said yes.

If his four o’clock hadn’t run long, if he’d seen the message before Mike and Rachel had already gone off to introduce themselves to that gallery owner, if he’d known in time that Mike wanted to meet up for a little bit, a quick chat, just to say hi, he would’ve said yes.

“Aren’t you technically looking at sunlight at night when you look at the moon?”

The question might have been profound at midnight when Mike sent it, but at nine forty-five on Sunday morning, it just seems sort of nit-picky.

One day, a Friday, Mike shows up to Harvey’s office unannounced, proclaiming that Rachel is not only too busy for lunch, but was too busy to remember to call him and cancel their plans, so now he’s here, and Harvey’s there, and they should go out, the two of them, for a hot dog or a pretzel or something to make sure Harvey doesn’t get so accustomed to all this glamour and decadence that he loses touch with the common man.

They don’t see each other very often, but that’s okay. Nothing really changes.

Nothing really has to.

\---

It’s an accident, when they meet again.

The novelty of having each other’s numbers wears off after awhile, and it’s been weeks since Mike left any sort of message enumerating the most philosophical of his midnight revelations. Sometimes he’ll ask if Harvey is going to be around when he’s planning a visit to the firm to see Rachel, and sometimes their plans overlap, but things fall through at the last minute almost as often, and it’s not particularly worth his while to get his hopes up nowadays. Every now and again, Harvey thinks about writing just to say hi, to remind Mike that he exists and to assure him that he hasn’t been forgotten, but it feels sort of pushy, sending a message with no real purpose, for no real reason, and he never does seem to follow through.

It’s comfortable, the way things are. Knowing they could be different if they tried, knowing that the option is available if they ever manage to hit on the right intersection of concept and impulse. Knowing that there’s no rush, because it’ll be there all the same. To exist in the same space, and to be on each other’s minds every now and again and know that fate might throw them together at any time, that the possibility always exists to be taken advantage of, if they choose. It’s a nice way to be.

Harvey isn’t thinking about any of that when he goes downstairs on Thursday afternoon with his briefcase full of records and transcripts and strategy memos. Harvey is thinking about his client being sued for breach of contract, he’s thinking about how to win a case when he knows the other guy is right, how to twist the facts the fit his narrative and trick everyone else into believing it happened exactly the way he says, even when he knows they shouldn’t, when all he wants to do is throw them down on the ground and demand to know what could’ve made them so blind, so foolish as to be taken in by his crafty words and cheap turns of phrase.

Harvey isn’t thinking about comfort and happiness and so on when Mike walks through the front doors and pauses on his way to the security desk, his slack, expressionless face so unreal, so unlike the idea that’s been on Harvey’s mind all this time, that he almost doesn’t recognize him.

“Mike,” he says, forgetting about deposition hearings and obstinate clients and inevitable trials and everything else he wishes would just disappear.

The artificial smile on Mike’s face when he turns around strikes Harvey in a hollow spot in his chest that makes him want to ask if they can pretend they haven’t seen each other, pretend this never happened and go their separate ways.

“Harvey,” Mike says. “Heading out already?”

“Trial prep.” Harvey holds up his briefcase, feeling stupidly like a child offering his hastily completed homework in exchange for permission to go out and play. “I have a meeting.”

Mike nods and pins his visitor’s badge to the waistband of his khakis.

“I hope you wipe the floor with those fucking bastards.”

Do you?

Those sorts of words aren’t meant to be spoken in such a cheerful tone. They aren’t meant to be spoken by someone who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Harvey should be glad for the support.

“I’m thinking about throwing the case,” he says, not because it’s true, but to see what might happen next. Or maybe it is true, who knows? Maybe he’s not a fucking liar.

“Huh,” Mike says, as though this is the sort of thing that happens every day.

Harvey grasps the handle of his briefcase with both hands.

“Thinking about it.”

Mike sticks his hands in his back pockets and shifts his weight from side to side.

“I’m sure they’d appreciate it.”

Those fucking bastards. Do them a favor, huh?

Harvey smiles anyway.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Mike nods steadily, not really agreeing with the sentiment so much as forgetting how to hold his head up straight. Harvey clenches his molars and presses his tongue to the back of his teeth.

“Nice seeing you,” Mike says.

“Yeah,” Harvey says. “You too.”

Didn’t we have a good thing going? Weren’t we on our way to someplace we wanted to be?

Mike looks over his shoulder at the elevators, and Harvey wonders for a second if he’s going to ask for permission to leave. He’d say yes, if Mike wanted him to. Whatever’s wrong, it isn’t his business and if Mike doesn’t want to tell him, he has no right to ask. What do they have tying them together, really? A bunch of coincidences, that’s all, wrong turns and dropped calls and bad timing.

“Okay,” Mike says then, smiling a wide smile, mouth closed. “I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah,” Harvey says, rocking back and forth, heel to toe. “It was nice seeing you.”

Mike walks away, and Harvey smiles blandly and shuffles the sole of his shoe across the marble floor. Shuff, shuff.

These are the worst kinds of meetings.

\---

It’s a mistake, the next time.

The associates’ bullpen isn’t on the fiftieth floor. Mike knows that it isn’t. He’s been there dozens of times before. The thing is that when his autopilot mode has two different destinations, and both places are in the same building, it’s really a tossup which button he’ll end up pressing in the elevator, and when his head is as far away as it is today, going anywhere, doing anything, it’s all just asking for trouble.

Everybody makes mistakes, though. It happens all the time. The nice thing to do is not to take advantage of them.

Harvey has never thought of himself as a particularly nice person.

“Mike,” he says, reaching out to hold the elevator door open, inventing a little bit of time for them to chat before they have to go off on their own, to part ways until the next time.

Mike blinks a couple of times as his disoriented panic fades away.

“Hi.”

Harvey smiles. “I haven’t heard from you in awhile, I wanted to make sure you’re doing okay.”

Mike looks at him vacantly.

“You didn’t call.”

Harvey’s smile gets a little tighter.

“I guess I didn’t.”

An associate walks past, watching them out of the corner of his eye as he pretends not to have noticed that anything is amiss, that both of them surely have better place to be.

Harvey leans into his resting arm.

“How are you doing?”

Do you really want to know? Is it finally worth your time now, has it weighed on your mind long enough? Do you feel guilty? Do you feel _bad?_

The elevator alarm begins to ring.

“You’re holding the door open,” Mike says.

Harvey grits his teeth and steps inside.

“Hope you don’t mind the company.”

Mike shrugs and keeps his eyes fixed on the button panel. After a second or two, Harvey presses the one with the big “L” on it, and Mike fiddles with the visitor’s badge pinned to the cuff of his shirt.

Forty-nine, forty-eight. Forty-seven.

Harvey clears his throat and looks at the edge of the ceiling.

“So how’ve you been?”

“Fine.”

Harvey snorts, a clumsy laughing sound that jerks his shoulders up so that he feels it along his spine. None of this is funny.

“Mike.”

He sticks his hands into his pockets and slides his gaze sideways, and Mike stares at the elevator buttons.

“It’s no big deal,” he says. “Everything’s fine.”

“Is it a money thing?” Harvey asks and immediately wishes he hadn’t. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t kept in touch,” he presses on, “but you seemed kind of out of it the last time I saw you, and if you’re still dealing with…whatever that was, I want to help.”

Has the ride to the lobby always taken so long? Maybe the elevator is malfunctioning, maybe there’s some kind of fault in the shaft, or the…machine, whatever makes these damn things work right. Maybe he should call somebody.

Mike crosses his arms over his chest and suddenly becomes much smaller.

“It’s not a money thing,” he says. “Don’t worry about it.”

Eighteenth floor.

“Come on.” Harvey tries to smile, and it comes out a little crooked. “You’re my friend, if you’re in trouble, of course I’m gonna worry about you.”

“You’re not my friend, alright?”

The floor indicator ticks down, and Mike glares at him viciously.

“You don’t know me, okay, stop pretending you can _fix_ everything.”

Three, two. One.

The door opens, and Mike storms into the hall.

Harvey isn’t even sure he means to follow. But then, what else is he supposed to do?

“Mike.” Fumbling after him, Harvey reaches out as though he might be able to grab Mike’s arm, as though Mike hasn’t already made it to the check-in desk, as though Mike isn’t dying to get away and never speak to him again. But he can’t stop trying, he can’t give up, not now, not when they’re both here, finally, when Mike is so close, so—

“Mike!”

“ _What?_ ”

Harvey barely manages to grasp the elbow of Mike’s jacket but he spins around anyway, his eyes wild, his back nearly pressed against the glass walls as Harvey freezes, the words in his mind dying on his tongue, sticking in the back of his throat.

Mike tears his visitor’s badge from his shirt and clenches it in his fist.

“What the fuck do you want?”

“What the fuck do _I_ want? What the fuck is wrong with _you?_ ” Harvey snaps, which basically answers the question but feels viciously spiteful all the same.

Mike glares at him, and Harvey thinks that maybe he’s not going to answer.

“My grandmother died,” he spits. “Okay?”

He keeps glaring, and just for a second, Harvey wishes he hadn’t asked.

Of course, that’s no good, is it? That won’t get them anywhere.

“Come on.” Grabbing Mike’s arm, a fantastically stupid thing to do, considering the circumstances, Harvey hauls him out the front door and manages to march them a good two or three feet away from the front door before Mike throws him off, thrashing about as though Harvey is trying to pin him to the wall.

“Dude, what the _fuck._ ” Mike stares at him aghast, but he hasn’t run off, and that has to mean something, doesn’t it? He doesn’t really want to go, he doesn’t really want to be alone. He came here in the first place for a reason, looking for something, and he’s not going to leave until he gets it.

No point in giving up now.

“You and me,” Harvey says, squinting against the sun’s glare shining off the Citigroup Center. “We’re going to sit down somewhere, and you’re going to talk to me about why you’re acting like such a goddamn dick.”

“My grandmother died,” Mike says bitterly. “I think I’m entitled.”

“Fine.” Harvey looks over his shoulder at the crowded street below the stairs. “But you’re full of shit if you’re telling me that’s not the same thing that was wrong the last time I saw you, three weeks ago, so you’re gonna tell me why you’ve trying to deal with this by yourself, because I’ll tell you what, Mike, whatever you’ve been doing, it’s not working.”

“You wanna know why I didn’t tell you?” Mike asks, his arm lashing out again as though to hit Harvey, even though he’s much too far away. “This, this is why I didn’t tell you, because I knew you’d try to fix it. And—sometimes you can’t, okay, not even you, because bad shit happens to all of us, and you just have to accept that there is _nothing_ you can do about it.”

You can’t stop picking at that gold foil, can you? Can’t quite figure out where you’re not wanted, where you don’t belong. You have to look behind that curtain, don’t you, under that shining veil, you have to push and push and push until you’ve uncovered everything we’ve tried to keep hidden, until you’ve thrown it all into the light of day. All the things we never wanted to see.

You don’t know what happiness is, do you?

You never really did.

Harvey clenches his fists at his sides to keep from throwing them.

“Go,” he says. “Get the hell out of here.”

There’s that snarl again. Sure, Mike, you’re always right, aren’t you, you always know what’s best. When to talk and when to shut up. You can do whatever you want, can’t you, if only you learned how to follow through on any goddamn thing.

“I don’t know why I came here in the first place,” Mike mutters, making a point of shoving past Harvey on his way across the granite.

Was it because this is a place you feel safe? Someplace familiar and warm?

Was it because this is someplace you can leave?

“That’s right,” Harvey says. “Keep running away, that’ll fix it.”

“You know what, man?” Mike turns back around, his shoulders heavy, his body sagging forward, and Harvey can’t imagine the effort it’s taking him to keep standing under all the weight he’s put on his shoulders.

He shakes his head.

“You don’t get it. Just…leave me alone.”

You don’t know. You don’t know what it’s like to feel this way.

Don’t I?

Harvey almost leans against the glass walls, except that’s the wrong direction. Anyway, they’re much too far away.

You don’t know anything about me.

And whose fault is that?

“Mike.”

Mike only stares at him, and Harvey sighs.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

He goes, across the platform and down the stairs, and Mike follows, a few steps behind. Harvey wonders if he knows where they’re going, if he even cares; what he’d put up with at this point, what he’d do if only someone told him how.

Central Park isn’t far. They’ll sit on a bench, or by the pond, and they’ll talk. It’ll be nice. Sure it will.

Harvey slows as much as he can, in case Mike wants to walk beside him. They meet up at the street corner, waiting for the traffic light, and it’s just as well.

Mike doesn’t say anything.

He’s probably thinking. Harvey should consider himself lucky that he’s come along at all.

The light turns green.

“We could go down to the pond,” Harvey says. “Or we could go to the zoo, if you want, that’s just a few blocks up.”

They walk to the corner, past a hot dog cart, and Mike heaves himself over the wall into the park proper. Setting his hands on the stone, Harvey figures he could probably jump it, too. Well. Maybe not in this suit, with these shoes and all. And Mike probably wants to be alone.

Harvey sets his back to the wall and leans on his elbows. Tourists walks by in groups of three and four, and he looks out at the traffic on Central Park South.

“How’d it happen?”

Mike stomps his foot down and digs his heel into the dirt.

“Heart attack,” he says. “Middle of the night.”

Harvey nods. “I’m glad it was peaceful.”

“The nurse found her in the bathroom the next morning.”

Harvey taps his fingers against the stone.

“Oh.”

Mike squats down in the grass.

“So.”

“I’m sorry.”

He yanks a dandelion out of the ground.

“Thanks.”

It’s a little late for that, huh. Harvey clears his throat.

“You two were close?”

“I owe her everything.”

And now she’s gone. And the world is a little darker.

Harvey watches the tourists walk by in groups of three or four, past the hot dog cart, the horse drawn carriages out in the street.

“You got a minute?”

Mike doesn’t say anything for awhile, and Harvey wonders if he’s gone away somewhere while he wasn’t looking. Then, a sharp sniff, a small sigh; that wouldn’t have made much sense, would it? No. Well, anyway.

“I’ve got time.”

Harvey nods.

“You wanna go back to my place?”

“You’re pretty fuckin’ forward.”

Harvey laughs softly, the sound drifting away into the ether.

“If we’re gonna talk, I’m not gonna be airing my dirty laundry to anyone who happens to walk by.”

There’s a sound like fabric ripping as Mike tears up a chunk of grass at the root, the shift of polyester as he picks himself up to his feet. Harvey taps his fingers against the stone.

“Okay.”

Harvey pulls his phone out of his pocket to text Ray.

“My driver will be here in five,” he says.

Mike scoffs. “You can’t take the subway like a normal person?”

Harvey slips the phone back into his pocket. “To be honest with you, I don’t think I know which train it is.”

“God,” Mike mutters, “you’re such an asshole.”

“Hm.” Harvey folds his arms over his chest. “Wait ‘til you see my place.”

Mike rubs his palm against his eye.

The car pulls up, and Ray steps out to hold the door open as Mike pulls himself back up over the wall. Harvey waits for him to get in first; it seems only polite, considering the circumstances. Besides, this way he’ll be on the right side to get out near the curb.

The ride only takes fifteen minutes; the silence makes it feel a little longer than that.

Mike keeps his head down as Harvey unlocks the private elevator and presses the button for the penthouse. The ride is faster than the elevator at the firm; there’s barely enough time to enjoy the view.

“Whiskey?”

Mike stands at the glass doors to the balcony, next to the support column.

“No thanks.”

Harvey nods and pours himself a glass.

“My dad died a few years ago,” he says. “Two thousand seven.”

“Huh.” Mike shifts his weight from side to side. “This is the part where you tell me you understand what I’m going through?”

“Can it, rookie, I’m just getting started.” Harvey sips his whiskey and stands on the other side of the column. “He was a jazz musician. Saxophone. From the time I was a little kid, he was my hero. I worshiped him. Never stopped me that he was on the road three hundred days out of the year.”

Mike scoffs, but doesn’t say anything.

No, it’s alright. It may not be a great one, but this is Harvey’s story.

“When I was sixteen,” he says, “I found out my mom was cheating on him. Bobby. There’d been others; when I was eight, I walked in on her and ‘cousin Scott,’ but you know kids. They’ll believe what they want.”

Mike hums, and Harvey takes another sip of whiskey.

“When I was eighteen,” he says, “she finally left him. But I kept that secret for her for two years, just…letting her make a fool out of him. I never said a word. He was my dad, and I kept that from him.”

“Wow,” Mike says flatly. “Depressing.”

Clutching the glass tight, Harvey sighs out through his teeth.

“Look,” he says. “I’m trying to tell you that I know what it’s like to be alone. Even when you’re surrounded by family.”

Mike doesn’t say anything.

No, it’s fine. That was a lot, all at once.

Harvey drinks the rest of his whiskey and sets the glass down on the cart.

“I may not know exactly how you’re feeling,” he says, “but for what it’s worth…I’m pretty sure I do understand.”

So there it is.

Harvey rubs the back of his hand against his mouth and looks out at the sprawling city below. There are probably hundreds of people down there who know better. Thousands who can relate better, who would’ve handled this better, who would’ve known what to say, how to act. How to fix it. Millions of people who Mike should be talking to right now, who would be better for him than Harvey.

This is what they’ve got.

Harvey closes his eyes, and Mike sucks in a long breath.

“I hate this.”

Harvey smiles, even though everything is wrong.

“I know.”

That doesn’t help very much, does it?

“You want to talk about it?”

Mike makes a strangled sound and walks away from the windows.

“No.”

Of course not. Why would you? There’s nothing we can do about it. Nothing we can fix.

So how about we run away for awhile?

Mike wanders slowly from the living room to the kitchen, the leather club chairs to the stainless steel sink, and Harvey watches him move around the unfamiliar space without really taking any of it in.

Not right now.

“Tell me something.”

Running his finger along the edge of one of the kitchen stools, Mike swivels it around and pulls himself up to sit.

“Tell you what?”

Harvey shrugs and takes an ambling step closer.

“Anything. Tell me something about you.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize we were back in middle school,” Mike says dryly. “You want me to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else before?”

“If you want.” Harvey stops in front of the drinks cart and picks up his dirty glass. “Tell me anything you want me to know.”

Mike sighs.

This is too much. Too little, and too much.

Harvey turns toward the window so that the city lights reflect off the incised cuts of his dirty whiskey glass, little starbursts and rainbow circles. He tilts the glass a little, right and left, and the lights keep reflecting off the same points in space, shining in his eyes.

“I bought her an apartment.”

Mike sets his hands on the counter and looks into the foyer, off to the right of the kitchen.

Harvey sets the glass down.

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t know how long we could keep paying those nursing home bills.” Mike laces his fingers together and smiles bitterly. “Rachel’s barely making enough to support just the two of us and it’s not like I’m turning a profit, but I’ve been saving money for as long as I can remember, and I finally had enough for a down payment on a little place near us, so I… I bought it.”

Harvey wonders if he remembers that he’s not talking to himself. This hardly seems the time bring it up.

Mike laughs, low and forced.

“Rachel said I was being stupid. That if we couldn’t pay the nursing home fees, there’s no way we’d be able to pay for an at-home nurse, that she was happy where she was and the best thing I could’ve done for her was to leave her there.”

Tuck her away on the shelf for later. Take her down when you remember she’s there, when you need her for something.

Harvey forces himself not to look away.

“She’s right, but I was just…” Mike raises his hands in front of his mouth and taps his knuckles to his lips. “All my life, Grammy’s taken care of me. Ever since my parents died, when it was just the two of us, she shouldn’t been taking care of herself— I should’ve been taking care of _her_ , and still, all those years, even when I was being a little shit, she always tried to do whatever she could to help me. And I finally had a chance to do something for her, after all this time, and then…”

After all this time.

All this trying, and trying, and trying. All our struggle and our sacrifice, our hoping and our wishing and our wanting. After everything we’ve been through. After all of it.

Now we’re here.

“I never really thought this would happen.”

None of us ever do.

Harvey’s eyes fall to the ground.

“You did the best you could.”

“But I didn’t,” Mike says thickly. “The last two, three years, all I’ve been doing is trolling galleries, sucking up to other artists, stalking critics, doing everything I can think of to make a name for myself, to get my foot in some door somewhere, and I had— I had all the time in the world to visit her, I kept telling myself I was gonna do it, but stuff kept coming up, and every time she’d say it was fine, I was doing what I had to do, she understood, and I— I listened to her, I _believed_ her, and…”

And now we’re all out of second chances.

Harvey takes slow steps across the floorboards, his arms hanging low, his spine curved forward right below his neck.

“You can’t get it back,” he says. “The time you lost. It’s gone.”

Biting his lip, Mike shakes his head, pressing his clenched fists to his forehead.

I know. I know it’s hard.

Harvey sets his hand on the counter, close enough for Mike to touch if he wants, far enough that it won’t happen by accident if he doesn’t.

“But there were a lot of good times before that.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” Harvey nods, and he thinks Mike sees it, just enough. “I know there were because you told me, because you told me how she was there for you when your parents died, and you were there for her. You were just a kid, you went through something no child should have to and you dealt with it the only way you knew how, and she loved you like a grandmother should. She loved you like a _mother_ should, and you did the best you could, and she knew it. And she loved you. And you loved her. And you can’t ask for a whole lot more than that.”

You can hope, and want, and wish, but it won’t change anything.

For a long while, there’s nothing.

Mike might be crying; it’s hard to tell from this angle. Of course, it’s hardly Harvey’s business. Whatever he likes. Whatever he needs. It’s alright.

Taking a deep breath, Mike lets it out on a long sigh.

“I could’ve done more.”

Harvey looks at his hands.

“You gonna hold onto that for the rest of your life?”

“You gonna stop me?”

“Would you listen if I tried?”

Seemingly despite himself, Mike grins, only for a second.

“Mike, look.” Harvey taps his index finger anxiously against the edge of the counter. “Maybe you could’ve. Maybe you did the best you could and it still wasn’t enough. Maybe life isn’t fair. But take it from me, things’ll be a lot easier for you if you accept what happened and let yourself move on.”

Don’t ask me how. But if you figure it out, I’d sure like to know.

The light piercing through the window dims the buildings across the way, and Harvey leans in a little.

“Okay?”

“Why the hell are you being so nice to me?”

Why?

Harvey lowers his gaze. A good friend is hard to come by. Don’t you think? Isn’t it the same for you?

Don’t you know you have the chance to be better than I am?

Mike looks at him, his eyes wide and red, and Harvey sits back again.

“What else am I supposed to do?”

I don’t know.

Out the window, a thrumming sound begins to fill the air, a gentle pressure against his ear drums; after a few seconds, Harvey recognizes the sound of a helicopter, gone much faster than it came on. The quiet that comes after is pierced with bird calls, two or three different kinds.

Harvey counts the moments of silence between the noise.

The pain will be unbearable until it goes away.

“Mike?”

Mike lowers himself to the floor and wipes his hand across his mouth.

“Fuck.”

Harvey smiles. Alright, alright; it’ll take some time, but they’ll be okay. Everything’s gonna be fine.

“Okay.” He smacks his palm against the counter. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way—”

They don’t. They’re not even close. They know they’re not.

Harvey isn’t sure whether he was about to admit to it or not, but it isn’t important right now and it’ll never be important again because Mike is cradling his face, Mike is pressing up against him, Mike is kissing him, and this is the only thing happening in the world right now, the only thing that anyone will ever know of this moment in time for the rest of eternity, that Mike is kissing him like it’s all he knows to do, like it’s all he knows _how_ to do.

Of course, any moment so frozen will eventually expire.

Before Harvey has come back to himself, before he can figure out what’s happened, Mike lets him go, stepping back, licking his lips nervously, or like he’s trying to remember the taste.

Harvey stares at him, and Mike looks away.

“I’m.”

Harvey should say something. He should. He wants to.

How do you answer a thing like that?

Mike shakes his head.

“Thank you for everything.”

Harvey knows that he’s going to leave. He feels it in the air, weighing down on them, a crushing avalanche; he feels it when Mike steps around him, wider than he needs to, and when he walks out the door.

These are the worst kinds of goodbyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You were an amazing grandson. You—you were buying her an apartment—”  
> “I bought her an apartment because I felt guilty for not having seen her for two months.”  
> “No, you were buying her an apartment because—”  
> “This is not a debate, Rachel. All right, I came to work because I want to work. I’m not telling people because I don’t want to talk about it. And now I’m gonna go out and get some fresh air, and when I get back, I really hope you will be done bothering me.”  
> —Rachel and Mike, “High Noon” (s02e10)
> 
> “Maybe it’s time that you just accept that it’s over. You lost. Deal with it.”  
> “Excuse me?”  
> “You seem to live in this deluded world where you think that you can always win. But sometimes you can’t. Bad things happen. You have to face the fact that life is gonna be this case or this case or this case! Jessica lost! You lost! And there isn’t anything that any of us, including the great and powerful Harvey Specter, can do about it.”  
> —Mike and Harvey, “High Noon”
> 
> “You bought an apartment in Manhattan.”  
> “I got it for her.”  
> “Oh.”  
> “I always hated the word ‘orphan.’ I mean, I just… I never felt like one. Until now.”  
> “I ever tell you about my dad?”  
> “I think you know the answer to that question.”  
> “He was a saxophone player. He sat in with everybody because everybody loved him. He believed in love at first sight, and unfortunately…his first sight was a groupie.”  
> “Your mother.”  
> “I was 16 when I caught her cheating. I knew if I told my dad he’d… Next two years went by, I didn’t say a thing, and she went right on just…making him a fool. Look, this is all to say that, I lived in a house surrounded by family, but I know what it’s like to be totally alone.”  
> “Wow. Your stoned is depressing. You should never share your feelings ever again. I mean, not with me.”  
> —Harvey and Mike, “High Noon”


	5. Chapter 5

Everything is still. The sky begins to dim, the light in the apartment along with it; Harvey must have forgotten to turn them on when he came in. Well, sure, he would have.

Thank you, Mike said. Thank you for everything.

Harvey puts his fingers to his lips and stares at the bedroom door as the lines begin to blur.

You can’t fix it, Mike said. This thing that’s wrong with me, you can’t make it go away.

Maybe I’ll try anyway.

Harvey lowers his hand, resting his arms on the counter and looking at nothing in particular. Space, that’s all. The emptiness around him, whatever’s filling it up.

Noise. Silence and noise.

His phone, that’s what that is, what’s making all the noise. Someone’s calling, or texting, or something. He won’t look, he won’t answer; he doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter.

Wrap yourself in darkness when the world outside is cold.

How silly. He can’t stay inside forever.

Three missed calls; two texts. That’s nothing. Pointless. Hardly worth the trouble. “Where are you?” Donna asked. “They’re waiting for you in the conference room.” And what difference does that make?

“What is going on?” Donna asked then. “I told them you’d call them tomorrow and they’re going to want an explanation.” And what do they care?

“Harvey,” Donna said, “are you okay?”

Why? Should I be?

Harvey sits at the kitchen counter, holding his phone in his hand, and looks at the blurred edges of the things around him.

“Family emergency,” he types.

Send.

What am I supposed to do, Mike asked him. The way things are now, what comes next?

Harvey stands and slams his phone into the wall.

How am I supposed to know?

\---

Mike writes to him every once in awhile.

The first time, Harvey’s pretty sure it’s an accident. A habit too hard to break right away, a new normal that’s going to take some time to get used to.

“Literally no one would care if humans went extinct.”

“I would,” Harvey writes back without thinking whether or not he should.

Mike doesn’t respond. Maybe he’s too surprised that Harvey bothered to say anything at all. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of message that was meant for a response, maybe he’s annoyed that he did.

Maybe he wishes he hadn’t.

At night, lying on his back and staring up at the streetlights skittering across his bedroom ceiling, Harvey thinks about writing again, in case two wrongs might make a right. That’s not how it works in real life, he knows, but maybe just this once.

The idea keeps him up for awhile. He doesn’t, of course, but it’s something to think about.

Three weeks later, Mike writes him again.

“You’d be dead.”

Harvey holds his phone in his hand and looks down at the message for a good long while.

Mike doesn’t write to him very often.

\---

“I haven’t seen Mike around here for awhile.”

The normal thing, the predictable thing to do in this scenario is for Harvey to drop whatever it is he’s doing and give Donna whatever it is she wants. It’s not the best custom, but it’s what gets them through the days. “That’s the way it’s always been,” as though that’s an excuse for anything. “This is the way we’ve always done it.”

Harvey reads to the bottom of the page and turns to the next file in the stack.

Donna steps closer.

“Did something happen, is he alright?”

“How should I know,” Harvey mutters. “He’s your friend.”

He used to be mine, too, I thought. But we all make mistakes.

Donna sighs.

“Harvey…”

You’re acting like a child, Harvey. I know you’re better than this, Harvey. You can be mature about this, can’t you Harvey? You can do what’s best for everyone?

“I haven’t spoken to him recently.”

Donna purses her lips as the divot between her brows becomes more pronounced. Her “worried friend” expression, her “I’m about to give you advice whether you want it or not” expression. Harvey knows it well.

He skims to the bottom of the page and turns to the next one.

“Are you going to give him a call?”

Harvey clenches his teeth together and keeps reading.

“You really should,” Donna says, in that tone of hers. “Before it’s too late.”

This won’t be the last he hears of the matter, he knows that much. She walks out, closing the door behind her, and Harvey sighs.

Do you miss him when he’s gone?

\---

Everything is as it’s always been.

Harvey sits at his desk with a practiced smile on his face, his sharp façade and his smug arrogance, fighting the fights that come his way, winning more than he loses, and he lives his life the way it’s supposed to be lived. Morning noon and night, the days pass by one after another, and he lives through them all.

Jessica puts him on the Geller case in the hopes that no one will end up dead by the time it’s over and done with, and Harvey requests an associate named Doris Xie, whose name comes right before Rachel Zane’s in the employee directory, and tells her when she shows up for her marching orders that she’s been selected for this prestigious assignment on the basis of her reputation as someone with uncommon diligence and attention to detail. She leaves the meeting with her head held high, and Donna looks over her shoulder into Harvey’s office as though he might not see her sad eyes and pinched lips and know exactly what she’s thinking of him.

I promise I’m doing my best. I promise you I’m trying.

Harvey lowers his head over his desk and writes out as much as he can remember of the Declaration of Independence on a legal pad with a water stain along the edge.

Give me a minute and I’ll be fine.

\---

Harvey doesn’t know why he started taking long lunches. He doesn’t need them; grabbing a sandwich at the deli across the street takes five, ten minutes tops, and his time would almost always be better spent working, but somehow the coffee’s always gone cold by the time he makes his way back, and the sun is always a little lower in the sky. Sometimes he has to stay late at the office to make up for it, but he doesn’t mind. It’s not like he has anywhere else to be.

Then one day he comes back to the office, a little after two, and rounds the corner to find Mike talking to Donna with a big smile on his face, and maybe this is what he’s been waiting for.

Mike spots him out of the corner of his eye and his smile goes brittle and strained, and maybe Harvey should go and come back later.

“Harvey,” Donna says, tapping her hand against the partition around her desk. “Louis was looking for you, he has some information on the Dressler suit he wants you to have.”

Harvey wonders if Louis is going to tell him that Dressler is a falling-down drunk. It’s just the sort of thing he’d want to make into a grand pronouncement, if only it wasn’t already old news.

“Tell him to leave it on my desk,” he says, idling in his office doorway as Mike sticks his hands in his pockets and bounces his heel off the floor.

Donna laces her fingers together and sets her elbows down behind her keyboard. “I did,” she says. “That’s where it is.”

“Okay.” Harvey nods. “Thanks.”

Donna smiles, as if she’s fooling anyone.

Mike looks over his shoulder, toward the corridor that leads to the elevators.

Harvey drums his fingers against the glass doorframe.

This isn’t going to go away, is it?

No. No, you knew it was coming.

“Mike,” he says. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Mike clicks his tongue and looks down at his shoes.

“Yeah,” he says. “I guess.”

Harvey holds his door open, and Mike walks in as Donna looks away; gotta love that simulated privacy. The door falls shut, and Harvey sighs.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Mike laughs into his chest.

“You’ve got one hell of an ego on you.” He looks up with a sharp jerk of his neck, his eyes narrow. “I’m not the only one with a phone.”

Harvey smiles around his clenched teeth, doing his best to keep his tone level. “Do I need to remind you? _You—_ ” he stabs his finger toward Mike’s face, “kissed _me. You’re_ the one who left, would you tell me why _I_ have to be the bigger man about this?”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Mike swats his hand away, taking a step back toward the leather sofa. “It was stupid, I shouldn’t have done it, I panicked, take your pick. My bad.”

“Your bad.” Harvey shakes his head, his smile flattening. “Your bad? Mike, you’d just got through telling me we weren’t even friends. That I should go to hell. Then you just— You pour your guts out about your top ten life regrets, you _kiss_ me, and you fuck off for a month and a half!”

“Would you let it go, it was just a kiss!”

“Then why did you _leave?_ ”

“What else was I supposed to _do?_ ”

Every impression of decorum vanished, they stare each other down between shallow breaths, Mike’s face beginning to redden across his cheekbones, and Harvey wants to shove him against the wall, wants to hit him, wants to kiss him and throw him out, wants to make him feel it the way he did, the way he’s been feeling it all this time without knowing what’s coming next, without knowing what came before to get them to this place.

Harvey’s eyes burn around the edges, but he’s not crying. He’s not. It’s just that he’s so angry, and this, all of this has borne down on him so hard for so long, and he’s not strong enough to do it on his own. Mike spits a breath through his teeth, his eyes glistening, and he’s going to leave again, Harvey knows he is. That’s how things go, that’s how they always go. That’s what people do.

“Fuck you,” Harvey mutters, turning away, lowering his eyes as his vision blurs. “I don’t know why I even bother.”

“Hey!” Mike crowds him suddenly, every muscle in his body taut and loaded. “You didn’t have to drag me out of here, you know that? You didn’t have to shove me down those steps, no one asked you for help!”

“I couldn’t just leave you there!”

“Why not?”

“I don’t _know!_ ”

Harvey pushes the flats of his palms against Mike’s shoulders, barely enough pressure even to feel, and Mike stumbles all the same, staring desperately back at him, searching for something, wanting, needing _something,_ god only knows what.

If I had the answers, I would give them to you. I swear. You won’t wait forever, I know, but I’m doing the best that I can.

Mike wipes his hand across his face.

“Harvey,” he says in that suddenly weary way he has, that tiredness of his that stretches far beyond this, far beyond today to places Harvey doesn’t know about yet, that he might never get to see. “Harvey,” he says again, “just… Are you mad that I left? Or are you mad that I was ever here at all?”

Are you even mad at me?

Your failings are your own. You know it. You pretend you don’t, but you do. You always have.

Harvey presses his hand to his forehead and paces to his desk.

“God dammit, Mike…”

Mike laughs, a scornful sound, clicking his tongue in the back of his mouth and setting his hands on his hips as he turns away again, back toward the door. It’s still there, don’t worry. Your quick escape. It’s waiting for you, whenever you’re ready.

“I don’t have time for this, okay?” Mike shakes his head again. “If you’re just gonna be jerking me around, I’ve got better things I could be doing with my time.”

“I’m jerking _you_ around?” Harvey repeats. “What the hell were you doing waiting for me outside my office?”

“You think I was waiting for you?” Mike points toward the glass. “You saw me, I was talking to Donna.”

“Bullshit!” Harvey slams his hand down on his desk. “I’m sick of all your goddamn excuses!”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Every time you see me,” Harvey says, smacking the desk again, “you got a new one to pull out of your ass. You gave the wrong name at the security desk, your plans with your wife fell through, you forgot which floor the bullpen’s on. But it’s never your fault, is it, I guess the universe is _conspiring_ against you!”

“You think I need to make up reasons to see you?” Mike laughs through his bared teeth. “Jesus Christ, how fucking insecure _are_ you?”

“Don’t lie to me!”

Mike’s mouth falls open as Harvey takes a menacing step toward him, but Harvey sees the flicker in his eye, the startled little blink. Good. He should be scared.

“You can lie to yourself all you want,” he says, “but don’t lie to me.”

Mike presses his lips together and holds his breath.

This is a dangerous game we’re playing here. We should know better than to make up the rules as we go along.

We should, and we do. We know. We do it anyway.

“You better get your shit in order,” Harvey says darkly. “Before you come running after me again.”

Mike’s lips press together tighter, pale around the edges, and for a moment there, Harvey thinks he’s going to say something. Defend himself, maybe, or try to turn it back on Harvey. Pretend it’s his fault, as if they don’t have plenty of blame to share between them for all of this.

Yeah, I’m just as guilty as you. Lies are things we tell to other people, they’ve got no place behind the curtain where no one else can hear.

Turning his head sharply, an indignant jolt, Mike grabs the door handle and storms out into the hall, and Harvey looks after him and wonders how he expected this all to end. Probably not like this.

He should have known better.

\---

Pinprick lights in the city skyline cast looming shadows on the office floor, highlighting the sharp lines of his lacquered desk and the nearly empty box of Altoids next to his computer that he’s sucked down one after the other until all he has left to show for it is a stomachache and a faint burning sensation on the roof of his mouth, and the vague remembrance of a passing thought that at least he’s not exactly skipping dinner.

Rising to his feet, Harvey stumbles toward the door, swaying slightly as the room tilts underneath him, banging his knee against the coffee table. He looks down at the glass surface, every smudge and smear visible in the dim, and then down at his leg, still holding him up.

“Ow.”

He feels a bit stupid, saying it out loud when there’s no one around to hear.

Oh; look at that. It’s almost midnight. When did that happen?

Harvey stops at the door to look back at his desk, piled high with papers and folders, scattered with pens and Post-It notes. It’s been a productive afternoon; lots of things taken care of, left stacked up there for anyone to see. He doesn’t remember any of it, anything he’s written or read, but it’ll still be there when he comes back tomorrow. He’ll figure it out.

Dawdling outside on the front steps for too long to be considered reasonable, it occurs to him that Ray won’t have waited around all night long without a word from him. If he wants to get home, he’ll have to take a cab. Or the subway, except that he’s an asshole, so that’s not going to happen.

Goddamn Mike Ross. Even when he’s not around, he still finds his way in.

Harvey stands on the corner, looking into the headlights of the oncoming traffic.

That fucking kid.

Are you mad that I left? Or are you mad that I’m here?

Harvey presses his fingers to his eyes.

Wouldn’t everything be easier if we had never met at all?

What a shame we’ll never know.


	6. Chapter 6

Autumn only lasts about four days before the first threat of snow.

The office always looks a little different once wintertime begins. The tower of fortitude and authority in the blue-sky summer stands muted and dulled to a gallows march against the hazy winter, a monument of glass and steel fading into the dull grey sky like a scene from some morose existential film about the grim hopelessness of life or some such thing.

Harvey stands on the front steps, looking up at the highest point. It’s difficult to see from here, threads of mist and fog covering up the top floors; those windows will need washing, whenever the weather clears. There’s not much point to a window if you can’t see the view, after all.

Closing his eyes, he takes a deep breath. There’s a certain smell in the air before a good snowfall, almost like rain but not quite; that’s a pretty unreliable measure, though, isn’t it? He’s better off listening to the weather report. Even so, if there’s a chance it is going to snow, he probably ought to go inside.

The front door opens before he’s managed to talk himself into it, and Harvey steps aside.

Mike doesn’t look up as he passes by. Maybe he doesn’t see him; maybe he doesn’t recognize him in his heavy winter coat. Or maybe he does, and this is all on purpose.

Harvey watches him go, jogging down the steps at a funny angle like he’s taking them two at a time. His navy pea coat is too big for him, Harvey thinks; too boxy around the shoulders. Winter coats can’t do much to keep out the chill if they don’t fit right.

Well. He probably knows what he’s doing.

Harvey walks into the lobby and turns around to watch through the glass façade as Mike turns right, toward the coffee cart on the corner. He walks past it, sticking his bare hands in his pockets and pausing the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change.

Harvey sighs.

These windows could use a wash.

\---

It’s been awhile since Harvey’s gone to any kind of gallery.

Not on purpose or anything. Not exactly. It’s just that there hasn’t been any reason to go to one, and he’s been so busy with his work and all. Those sorts of things are the first to fall through the cracks, those little flights of fancy and such; isn’t it always the way? In fact, there was one time, a few years back, when he was so busy that he went a whole five months without renting a single vintage car to speed down the almost-but-not-entirely empty highway at one in the morning.

Anyway.

He shows up at the Frick Collection half an hour late. Jessica’s not too happy about it, but he assures her that it was time well spent; she probably doesn’t believe him as much as she says she does, as well she shouldn’t, but it’s hardly worth getting hung up on when he’s done so much worse in all the time she’s known him. He makes the rounds exactly as he’s meant to, flattering shallow minds and inflating already massive egos, wandering the halls and pretending his opinions about the art are anything more than his own conceited tastes.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

Harvey clasps his hands behind his back.

“It’s very nice.”

A woman steps up to his side and smiles at the painting hung on the wall before them. “Oh, I just adore his work.”

Harvey looks down at the placard. “Charlotte, Lady Milnes” (British, 1788-92) by George Romney, it says.

“It’s impressive.”

“Yes.” The woman turns her smile on him, placing her hand at the neckline of her cranberry red dress, the low point right between her breasts. “I’ve always been captivated by his ability to find the beauty in his subjects. No matter who they are.”

He looks at Charlotte, Lady of Milnes’ black eyes fixed on something slightly out of frame and wonders whether she had the slightest idea, at the time, that some asshole like him would be standing in a gallery before at her picture, two hundred years later, and thinking nothing of it so much as how sloppy the brushwork looks around her shoulders.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he says. “I’m more of a photography man, myself.”

The woman’s smile slips a bit, and she runs her fingers along her clavicle bone.

“Oh,” she says.

He hums softly.

The woman waits another few seconds before she walks away. Harvey wonders if they’ll ever see each other again, if she’ll remember him when she wakes up tomorrow morning. If he’ll remember her.

They won’t.

He doesn’t mind.

\---

The lighting is always better, this time of year.

In the summer, when the weather is hot, the air has a certain heaviness to it, a weight that he can see but can’t describe. A drench of sweat that covers everything, even when the heat is a dry one. In the spring and autumn, when the weather is usually cooler but not always, the lighting is too fickle to pin down, too uncertain to match up the way it looks with the way it feels. Winter, though, winter is the best because winter is always honest. Winter with its stark lines, its bitter skies, never pretends to be anything other than what it is. Winter is darkness, the world stripped bare and laid out just as it is. Winter is death, and hiding from it wherever he can.

Harvey stands at the door to the balcony with a glass of whiskey in his hand and looks out into the winter night, where everything is sharp and clean.

He could go out there and freeze to death, right now, if he wanted. But then who would look after his plants?

Harvey smiles and drinks his whiskey. Plants, huh? What a silly thing to make up. Come to think of it, maybe he should get some fish.

This is just one of those nights.

Harvey sighs and drinks his whiskey.

A pounding sounds at the door.

What time is it now, eight? Nine? Visiting hours are over.

The pounding continues. Harvey shakes his head and sets his whiskey down. It’s fine, it’s fine. What does he have to hide here? What right does he have to keep anything for himself, what part of this life is really his to own?

Mike.

His jacket is too thin for the cold outside. Maybe he ran out without thinking too hard about it, maybe he didn’t think he would be out long.

Harvey’s hand slides off the doorknob.

“You need something?”

Mike drops his gaze to the floor. Maybe Harvey should take pity on him; how long has it been now? How many days, weeks, months?

Maybe it’s been long enough.

Harvey steps back, and Mike follows him in. In past the drinks cart, where Harvey’s set his whiskey; past the kitchen, where Harvey doesn’t think they’ll ever go again, the two of them. Harvey leads Mike in to the living room set, to the club chairs where he can sit in one and Mike can sit in the other, and they can stay apart from one another, you in your place and me in mine, and maybe they can talk for awhile. Maybe someone will say something wise.

Maybe they’ve got somewhere left to go that isn’t straight down to hell.

Mike rests his elbows on his knees and his hands in front of his mouth, and Harvey looks out the window behind him, up into the sky for snow.

“What the hell were you thinking?”

Mike closes his eyes, and Harvey turns back around to look at him.

“What do you want from me?” he asks.

What did you want from me back then, that day when you changed everything we are? What is there to be done about it now?

Mike shakes his head.

Nothing. Nothing. There’s nothing I deserve, and nothing you can give.

And how dare you ask anything of me?

Harvey bites his tongue and shakes his head.

“Would you say something?”

Something? Anything? The wrong thing, the right thing, it doesn’t even matter anymore. Words, any words, any words at all will do. Give me someplace to begin.

Mike sighs and looks down at the carpet.

“I’m sorry.”

Harvey scoffs in the back of his throat.

“That’s it? After all this time, that’s the best you can do?”

Mike presses his fingers to his eyes.

“That’s all I’ve got.”

My best will never be good enough. We all know it.

Harvey shakes his head.

“Just tell me why you did it.”

Tell me that it meant something. Tell me there was a reason. Tell me you understand what you’ve done.

Tell me why I’m hurting.

Mike digs his nails into his hairline.

“Because I’m an idiot?”

“Mike.” Harvey turns back to him. “Don’t.”

Don’t make this anything less than what it is. Don’t pretend you don’t understand what you’ve done.

Mike rubs his eyes again and lays his hands down in his lap.

No, I won’t.

“Everything was going fine,” he says. “I thought I was on the road to something. I bought the apartment, I was getting it all set up for her, mapping out the furnishing and everything, and— This museum curator in Brooklyn, my friend Jenny put us in touch and he wanted to meet me, we were going to get together so I could show him some of my stuff, it was…all set up and ready to go, two weeks in advance, because I was prepared, for once in my life, everything was coming together, and then I— I got this fucking _phone call,_ some nurse I’ve never spoken to before in my _life,_ and suddenly all my plans, everything I had, everything I was _going_ to have, everything just…”

Turned on a dime.

That split second, the one you never see coming. The one that changes everything.

Harvey looks down at his shoes and takes a shallow breath. Don’t. Don’t be taken in by all this.

Focus.

“Mike, you’re not answering my question.”

“I’m trying, okay?” Mike says thinly. “I’m telling you I was fucking lost, okay, my life was falling apart around me.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

“Look, I don’t know why I did it.” Mike looks up at him forlornly, his hands hanging limp between his knees and his wide eyes too red around the edges. “Maybe you were the first person who really listened to me, maybe you were the only person who seemed to actually give a shit about me, I don’t know. Maybe I was just that desperate. Maybe I’m a fucking idiot.”

The first person. The only person, after all that time.

Harvey clenches his fist.

“You’re fucking selfish, is what you are.”

“Am I?” Mike glares at him, his face flushing, his red eyes getting redder. “Okay, fine, maybe I am. But you know what, I’m not the only one who’s having trouble figuring all this shit out, okay, I still haven’t heard anything about what _your_ problem is.”

“ _My_ problem?” Harvey snaps, his sympathies dissolved in an instant. “Mike, you gave me fucking whiplash in there! You hate me, you never want to see me again, you tell me all your goddamn problems like it’s some kind of deathbed confession, you _kiss_ me, and then you’re just _gone!_ What the hell am I supposed to think after that?”

“Do you hear yourself?” Mike bolts from his chair, looking down on Harvey, towering over him. “You’re not telling me _anything!_ I was there, okay, I know what happened, I know that everything went wrong. The thing I want to know, the thing you’re not telling me is _why!_ ”

“Why?” Harvey shoves himself up to meet Mike just where he is, forcing him back an inch. “Because you’re _married,_ Mike! You’re married, and you kissed me, and you ran away!”

“That’s what this is about?” Mike narrows his eyes and jabs him in the chest. “You shove me out of your life, you string me along, you make me feel like a fucking _failure_ because I, because my _grandmother_ died and I, I didn’t know how to deal with it, you left me all alone because you’re mad that I _kissed_ you?”

“I told you about my mother, I told you what she did to me!” Harvey’s voice is much too loud, pulled out of his chest and making his head throb, stabbing at his temples. “I _told_ you!”

“It was a kiss!” Mike swats his hand away. “This isn’t some—harlequin novel, Harvey, I didn’t—confess my undying love to you, I was vulnerable and I was scared and I was looking for something I needed and, I get that probably wasn’t the best way to find it, I know I fucked up, I was wrong, but…” He shakes his head miserably, taking another step back.

“What did you think was going to _happen?_ ”

What do you want from me?

Harvey shakes his head and raises his hand to his mouth.

Tell me. All your deepest fears, your deepest desires. Tell me what they are.

Do you even know? Is it that nothing you have is anything you ever really wanted?

Is it that you’re a failure at love? At life? At everything?

And you always have been.

And you always will be.

Harvey turns away.

“I need to be alone.”

“Harvey.”

“ _Mike._ ” Harvey turns back and tries to bring his eyes back into focus. “Get out of here.”

Mike doesn’t.

When has he ever been much good at following directions?

“Look, this isn’t just about you.” Mike sets his hand on the back of his chair and grips it tight. “I’m sorry. Okay? I am.”

“Yeah.” Harvey takes a step backwards, toward the windows. “Fine. You wanna know how you can make it up to me?”

“I’m not leaving.”

Harvey laughs, low and cold. This is one hell of a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, isn’t it? One hell of a hole we’ve dug down into the ground, nice and deep.

“Do you have any idea how much of my life I’ve spent being afraid of myself? Of what kind of person I might become?”

Mike taps his palm against the chair back and sighs.

“You want me to be afraid of you, too?”

Harvey shakes his head. “That’s not what this is about.”

I’m sick and tired of all these walls I’ve built, these bricks I’ve laid. All these places I’ve never gone because of all the things that might have happened.

Mike takes a couple of steps across the floor.

“Do you hate me?”

“You know I don’t.”

At least I hope you do.

Mike stands at his side and looks out the window.

“Yeah.”

Harvey pushes his hand back into his hair and turns to the pinprick collage of city lights across the river.

“What did you mean?” he asks. “I was the first person who listened to you.”

Mike shrugs. “Something like this, everyone has an opinion.” He smiles, barely. “Everyone wants to give me advice, nobody wants to hear about whether I want to follow it.”

“Uh huh.”

Harvey slips his hands into his pockets, and Mike laughs through his teeth.

“I just needed someone to talk to.”

Don’t we all?

A green traffic light turns red, and some of the white lights stop moving.

“I can give you some names.”

Mike scoffs. “Thanks anyway,” he says. “I don’t have that kind of money.”

“Insurance?”

“You know how much I’d have to pay for a plan that covers mental health services?”

Harvey hums under his breath.

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, well.”

The clouds drift low in the sky, and Harvey reaches out to slide the balcony door open and stand with one foot out in the cold.

“You kissed me because I listened to you?”

“Maybe.” Mike leans his arm against the window beside the door and watches those clouds, those red and green and white lights.

“I did it because I wanted to.”

Harvey steps out through the door.

Did I want you to do it, too?

Did I?

“You and Rachel.”

Don’t tell me what I’ve broken. Don’t tell me what I’ve done. I know it all.

I do.

Mike rests his forehead in the crook of his elbow.

“I love her as much as I can.”

We’re all doing our best. Making up the answers as we go along, putting our lives together piece by piece.

“I’m not gonna be your dirty little secret.”

Mike laughs, his breath misting against the glass.

“I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“So you’re going to tell her?”

Mike steps back away from the window and stands behind the door, out of the chill.

“I don’t think there’s much to tell.”

No point in making something out of what’s not.

Harvey takes a deep breath of the brisk air. It’s nice out here, for now but not forever. It’s nice, though, to have this place to go. Where everything is calm, and nothing is important.

The cold starts settling into his bones, and Harvey takes one last breath before he turns around. Mike grins at him as he comes inside, and Harvey reaches back and closes the door behind him.

“So,” Mike says. “You think we can still be friends?”

Let’s try, why don’t we. Isn’t everything better this way, when we’re giving it our all?

“I think we can give it a shot.”

Kicking his heels across the hardwood, Mike ducks his head down and turns around, back to his chair, running his thumb along the stitching in the black leather. He seems like the type to sit down and make himself at home wherever he is, and Harvey wonders what’s wrong with this place that he doesn’t do it now.

“So…where’d you grow up?”

“Queens.” Mike grips the backrest. “You?”

“Manhattan. Well,” Harvey draws his shoulders back as he shuffles across the floor, “Newton. Massachusetts. I moved to New York for college, never looked back.”

“No kidding.”

“Nope.”

Mike drums his fingers against the leather, an arrhythmic staccato, and lifts his head back up, looking somewhere between the kitchen cabinets and the hallway to the front door. The wind begins to whistle outside, and Harvey stops at the drinks cart to trace around the edge of his discarded whiskey glass.

Mike clears his throat.

“I thought about calling.”

Harvey smiles drearily.

“Yeah?”

Mike nods, and Harvey pushes his glass aside.

“What stopped you?”

“Oh, you know. The little things.” Mike turns to him, his mouth twisted up at the corner. “It hadn’t been long enough, it’d been too long, I didn’t know what to say. Then at some point I figured out this was more of an…in-person conversation.”

Harvey nods. “I’m glad you finally got around to it.”

“Plus, slamming the door in a guy’s face is so much more effective than hanging up on him.”

“I didn’t slam the door in your face.”

“No, but it was important to me that you had the option.”

Harvey laughs into his chest, and Mike’s broken smirk widens into a giddy grin, just for a second. This is nice, this thing they’ve been missing. This thing they’ve got between them, this fractured sort of intimacy.

“I missed you,” Mike says.

Harvey raises his head as the laughter fades away.

“Yeah?”

Mike shrugs.

“This,” he says, gesturing into the open air as though that explains anything.

Harvey looks at the space between them, at the artificial glow of the city filling the room cleanly separating the past from the present, the then from the now. Everything that almost wasn’t from everything that is.

Mike drops his arm. Harvey takes a step into the light shining in through the windows, the glass walls, and looks down at the shadow he casts.

“People who leave me don’t usually come back.”

Mike smiles.

“First time for everything.”

Harvey nods slowly. Yeah, there is. There sure is.

This time, though. This isn’t like the first time.

He looks into Mike’s eyes for answers to questions he won’t dare himself to voice, words he doesn’t know that he’d believe even if he heard them out loud, even if he spoke them into existence himself. He raises his hand, cradling Mike’s face and running his thumb along his cheekbone when Mike leans ever so slightly into his touch.

He could say something. He could ask a question, he could make an excuse.

Mike takes a step forward, more of a hint than an accusation, and Harvey runs his thumb along his cheekbone, right underneath his eye, and doesn’t move away.

Mike leans in and kisses him softly, and he closes his eyes and doesn’t move away.

Maybe they can stretch this moment out a little longer, and a little longer after that, and when they get to the end of time, nothing will really matter to anyone anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Okay, you wanna talk about what happened? Let’s talk about what happened. Because if anyone knows about selfish, it’s you.”  
> “You have some nerve saying that to me when you know I have put you over me for years.”  
> “I don’t care what you’ve done for years. You knew I was seeing someone, and you did that to me anyway.”  
> …  
> “Don’t you get it? You made me the one thing I never wanted to be.”  
> “It was a kiss, Harvey. We’ve done more than that. Unless, of course, you haven’t told her that either. Okay, you want my advice? Instead of being furious with me, maybe you should think about why you haven’t told Paula any of this.”  
> “Well, I’m not interested in your advice, Donna. As far as I’m concerned, your judgment sucks.”  
> —Harvey and Donna, “Hard Truths” (s07e11)
> 
> [The Frick Collection](https://www.frick.org/) is a museum in New York which houses sixteen permanent galleries of painting, sculpture, and decorative art.
> 
> I don’t put much stock in Samantha’s assertion that Harvey “grew up in Riverside, New York” (s08e01), given that incidents of Harvey’s childhood portrayed in the first four seasons imply that he grew up somewhere in Massachusetts, possibly near Boston.


	7. Chapter 7

This is the line between want and need.

In the dead of night, Harvey lies in bed as the hours tick heedlessly by, staring into the darkness at the edges of the furniture and hating himself in all the wrong ways.

He tried to do better, didn’t he? He did everything he could. He _wanted_ to be better. He knew what to look out for, those mistakes on the horizon, and he never, ever made them because he _knew_ better, because he _was_ better.

He could have been the one to walk away.

Harvey rolls over onto his side and closes his eyes, as if that makes any kind of difference. The hours tick on by, and the darkness closes in, all around, and the lines disappear.

Maybe this is the best he can do.

\---

Jessica assigns Harvey to the Logan Sanders case with little fanfare, mentioning in an offhanded sort of way that she hopes their client’s interest in building on his meager four point nine percent share ownership in Gillis Industries to instigate a hostile takeover will cheer Harvey up from whatever funk he’s been in recently. Harvey smirks and winks and assures her that she doesn’t need to worry, and he’s pretty sure she believes him because she wants to more than because she thinks he’s telling the truth.

Back in his office, Harvey calls Doris Xie, who does good work and pays attention to detail, and she promises to come to his office right away as soon as Louis is finished briefing her on the Malone situation. Harvey swears sharply at the announcement, and she rushes to apologize before he can reassure the poor girl that she’s done nothing wrong, but he should have known that Louis would try to swoop in and snatch up any associate Harvey deemed to be worthy of his time. He doesn’t know the details of the Malone case, but he does know Logan Sanders, and if that asshole tries to call them up when Doris is too busy with Louis’s work to drop everything and rush to Logan’s side, there’ll be hell to pay.

“Don’t worry about it,” Harvey assures her. “Take care of Malone.”

Doris apologizes again, and Harvey calmly hushes her and makes sure to hang up before Louis catches her doing anything other than exactly what he ordered her to.

So now what?

Harvey drums his fingers over the number pad of his telephone.

He’s not a good man, but that doesn’t have to stop him from doing a good thing. Maybe he can start to make amends, even if he has to do it quietly, even if no one will see. Maybe he can make up for all his stupid mistakes before they turn into something he can never take back.

The phone rings once before she picks up.

“Harvey?”

He closes his eyes a moment to keep from flinching.

“I have an assignment for you.”

Rachel pauses a moment. “Oh,” she says then, a little shortly, like this is the last thing she expects. Sure, that’s fair enough; it’s been awhile, after all.

“You busy?”

“No, no,” she says. “I— I mean, yes, but if you need me to do something, I have time.”

“Hostile takeover,” he says, trying not to listen too hard to her voice in his ear. “Come to my office, I’ll give you the paperwork.”

“Yes,” she says. “I’m on my way.”

He hangs up too firmly and hopes she doesn’t notice.

Every journey begins with a single step; journeys of repentance must be just the same, isn’t that right? This is as good a beginning as any, considering that every road sprawled out for him to walk down make him sick.

Harvey puts his face in his hands.

Tell me what I’m doing, would you? Somebody, anybody, please tell me what it means, because I’m afraid I don’t know.

\---

They spend long days at the office. Nights, too, sometimes; Harvey tells Rachel not to sleep at her desk, that it’ll give the other associates the wrong idea about their jobs, about the partners, that it’s bad for her back to spend her nights hunched over in her chair, but she sinks her teeth in and she doesn’t let go, a bloodhound on the scent of a good win, and he gives up without much of a fight.

Mike comes to visit, sometimes, more often than he has in awhile. Or maybe not; maybe he comes by just as often as he always has, and the difference is that Harvey knows it now, because Mike comes to visit Rachel and Rachel is with Harvey and it’s too difficult to avoid him to be worth the trouble. Or maybe he isn’t even trying, Harvey doesn’t know. Harvey doesn’t ask.

“Harvey,” Rachel says one day, “we’re going out to lunch for Mike’s birthday, do you want to come?”

Harvey checks the calendar. May eighth. Today is May eighth, and it’s Mike’s birthday.

He had no idea.

“Happy birthday,” he says, smiling up at the pair of them.

Rachel grins back at him, and then Mike does, too.

“We’re going to Dig,” Rachel says, clasping Mike’s hand and threading her fingers through his. “Do you have time?”

She doesn’t want him to come. She can’t. This is a platitude, a gesture, an excuse. He’s meant to say no. He has to say no, he _wants_ to say no.

Harvey closes his laptop and pats his breast pocket to check for his wallet.

“How about Capital Grille instead?” he says. “My treat.”

Rachel’s eyes widen a little, and her and Mike’s clasped hands swing back and forth between them.

“Oh,” she says. “Ah. I… I mean, it’s your birthday, what do you think?”

Mike looks down at her, still smiling, and raises their clasped hands to his lips, pressing a gentle kiss to her knuckles and then smiling again, still smiling, always smiling.

“I’m game if you are.”

Rachel nods firmly, her mouth barely curved now but mirth sparkling in her eyes as she looks up at her husband, smiling back at her, always.

Harvey stands over his desk and pats his pocket and thinks about reneging on his offer, feigning some emergency to keep him chained to his desk, picking up the phone that isn’t ringing as though it could offer him some support.

Well. That would be rather childish, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, there’s no reason to bother with something so petty. There’s no need. Everything’s great.

Just great.

\---

“Harvey?” Rachel taps gently on his office door, stepping tenderly inside as though she hasn’t breezed in a dozen times before to offer him this uncovered evidence or that unsolicited advice. “Can I talk to you?”

Not with that attitude, you can’t.

Wondering if this hasn’t been a fantastic mistake from the very start, wondering how it could be anything but precisely that, Harvey turns over the file laid out before him and looks up with a terribly forced smile that hopefully doesn’t look like something that’s hurting him too badly.

“Something wrong?”

“No,” she says instantly. He hopes she doesn’t think he believes her.

She tucks her hair behind her ear, and he folds his arms on top of his desk.

“What do you need?”

She smiles, a little flinch, and he bites down on the inside of his mouth.

“I was talking to Mike about the case,” she says. “We— We weren’t talking about anything confidential. He and I talk about work sometimes, we bounce ideas off each other and, talk through problems we’re having. Giving each other a fresh perspective.”

Tapping his fingers at the crook of his elbow, Harvey looks up at her blandly and tries not to think too hard about what kind of perspective she might be able to offer to someone like Mike, what sort of structure she tries to impart to his free spirit, his inherent spontaneity and lighthearted whimsy. He tries not to think about how much Mike probably appreciates it, those little glimpses into the world he left behind, the life he tried to lead so long ago.

They’re good for each other. A nice compliment, opposite sides of the same coin. They are.

“And?”

She tucks her hair behind her ear again, a pointless reflex, and takes a breath to shoo away her nerves.

“I told him about Logan,” she says, a weight to her voice like the words are supposed to mean something other than what they do, but if he doesn’t know, she certainly won’t tell him. “I told him that he wants to buy Gillis Industries, I explained the whole situation, and… The thing is,” she says, “Gillis is a movie distribution company. Logan doesn’t care about movies, he only cares about capital, and if we let him buy them out, all those employees are going to lose their jobs.”

Harvey looks at her askance. “If we ‘let him’?” he repeats. “Rachel, he’s our client. It’s our job to _help_ him.”

“I know,” she says. “I know it is. But those people didn’t do anything to deserve this, they’re just doing their jobs, they didn’t know— They couldn’t have seen this coming, and doesn’t it seem unfair? To them?”

Where the fuck is this coming from all of a sudden?

Harvey frowns. “Rachel, we’ve been working on this case for months, are you telling me you’re just now getting around to looking at the terms of the deal? What the hell have you been doing all this time?”

“I’ve read them!” she says. “I have read them, I knew the terms. I just hadn’t really thought about it that way, that Logan getting a little richer would mean so many people having their lives completely ruined.”

That might be pushing it just a bit.

“Gillis has connections, I’m sure he’ll help them out.”

“Harvey.” Leaning against his desk, she stares down at him with those big doe eyes of hers, as if no woman has ever tried to charm him into doing something he knows he shouldn’t, as if her sob story will be the one that breaks him. “Harvey, I don’t want to hurt these people.”

I want to be the light in the darkness. I want to be the start of imagining a time when things are better than they are.

I want to be something more than I am.

Harvey presses his hand to his forehead and massages his temples.

“Put together a proposal,” he says. “If you can come up with a plan, an honest to god plan that we can put in front of Sanders’ face, something on paper that we can walk him through… I don’t know. We’ll see.”

Rachel nods solemnly, accepting the gift he’s bestowed upon her with the appropriate measures of dignity and grace.

“I’ll have it on your desk by Friday.”

Harvey makes some kind of gesture with his hand, maybe an acknowledgment, probably a dismissal, and Rachel knows well enough to take her leave with the win she’s gotten. Whatever her sudden motives, whatever spurred this impetus after all this time, Harvey doesn’t care, he doesn’t want to know. She can do what she likes, it doesn’t matter.

Mike will be happy to know what she’s done.

What a nice idea that is.

\---

Harvey leaves the office well after dark, late enough that the hour doesn’t matter anymore, street lamp flashing across his face on the drive home and traffic lights blinking red yellow green across the glossy wet pavement. Up in his apartment, he shucks off his coat, his shoes, his tie, yanking on shorts and sneakers and stepping back out into the night to run, run, run, any direction, any destination, the air cool against his skin and invisible rain misting in his eyes.

He’ll run until he can’t run any farther. He’ll run until he can’t take another step. That’ll show them. That’ll show them all.

Show them what? Do you even know?

Of course not.

Harvey runs, and runs, and runs, until he collapses, heaving, on a bench just outside the entrance to Central Park on East sixty-seventh street, where nothing exists of any particular importance to him, far away from anything he knows. Pressing his hand to his chest, he leans over his lap as the mist soaks his skin through his thin cotton clothes.

One of these days, things will be better than they are.

\---

True to her word, Rachel marches into his office on Friday afternoon with an indexed proposal, complete with about two dozen pages of background research that Harvey knows for a fact Sanders won’t read, but might keep him from throwing the whole thing out sight unseen. She seems proud of herself, anyway, diligently walking him through the plan of attack as he feigns interest and catches maybe every fifth or sixth word out of her mouth. It’s probably more than sufficient to get the job done. Not that it matters; whether Sanders takes her up on it or not, it doesn’t make any difference to the bottom line. He wants his hostile takeover, he’ll get his hostile takeover.

“Uh huh,” Harvey says when she seems to have finished talking. “It’s nice that you’ve done your homework, but what has he said, or done, up to now that makes you think he’s going to go along with this?”

She gets a spooked sort of look in her eye, tenting her fingers over the proposal on his desk and pointedly straightening her posture. He leans back in his chair and looks up at her impassively, and she clears her throat.

“He’ll do the right thing,” she says flatly. “I’ll convince him.”

It’s not her job to convince him, it’s her job to follow Harvey’s lead and do as he says. It’s her _job_ to come up with ideas like this and let him decide whether or not to run with them, it’s her _job_ to pick up all the grunt work Harvey doesn’t have time for, all the crap that needs to get done that he doesn’t want to do.

It’s not her fault he’s pulled her into this.

Harvey grabs the edge of the proposal and slides it out from under her hand.

“Have Donna call him,” he says, skimming the cover page. “Set up a meeting.”

Rachel nods.

“Thank you.”

Harvey drops the proposal back on his desk and opens his laptop.

“Let me know how it goes.”

He shouldn’t. She’s untested, she’s got some personal agenda she won’t tell him about, she’s too fired up about this damn case to go at it with a level head. Jessica handed it to him as some kind of gift, her twisted version of a pick-me-up when a whiskey sour would’ve done the job just as well, and now he’s throwing it to the dogs because the pieces haven’t all fallen into place, one on top of another, and he knew they wouldn’t, and he never expected them to, but he could use a break, god dammit, he could use a little bit of wind in his sails. Just this once, doesn’t he have it coming? Isn’t he trying to make his atonement, isn’t he trying to make things right? Doesn’t that count for something? Anything? Anything at all?

Rachel looks down at him uncertainly, her polished nails twitching against the stiff wool of her skirt.

“Are you sure?”

He shouldn’t. It’s a terrible idea. Bound to explode in their faces in a truly spectacular fashion.

“Everyone’s gotta start somewhere.”

She nods again, more slowly this time, and backs out of the room as he opens a blank word document and starts typing the first thoughts that come into his head about nothing in particular.

Every day, the act becomes a little more absurd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Dig](https://www.diginn.com/) is a fairly inexpensive locally-sourcing salad-and-bowl restaurant chain with a location quite close to 601 Lexington Avenue (i.e., Pearson Specter). [The Capital Grille](https://www.thecapitalgrille.com/home) is a considerably pricier steakhouse chain, also with a location close to 601 Lexington Avenue.


	8. Chapter 8

The kitchen sink is full of dirty dishes left over from last night’s dinner. A smiley face, drawn in balsamic vinaigrette dragged across the salad plate by the tines of his fork, might have dried to a stain that’ll fade in the wash but never quite come out, and Harvey thinks for a second about throwing the plate into the garbage.

Shrugging off his jacket, dropping his briefcase on the counter, Harvey goes to the drinks cart and pours himself a tumbler of scotch. He doesn’t really want it, he doesn’t think, but it’s about the right hour for this sort of thing, and today has been one of those sorts of days. Not that anything went particularly wrong, but neither did it go particularly right, and he’s gotta do something to settle the nauseated feeling it’s all left in his stomach.

The night air is cool on his skin, brisk in his lungs. Harvey takes quick sips of his scotch to keep from spitting it back out before he can swallow.

It’s hard to decide whether this place feels more like a prison or a wasteland.

\---

Rachel’s meeting with Logan Sanders is set for next Tuesday.

None of them are thrilled about it, but it’s not as though there’s anything they can do. It wasn’t too long ago, in the grand scheme of things, that Sanders Senior retired, and Logan has plenty to keep him busy just trying to convince his employees that he knows what he’s doing, much less that he can advance the company in any way. In fact, it’s probably some kind of minor miracle that he has time to see her so soon. Relatively speaking.

Harvey reviews her proposal again and doesn’t particularly care either way.

She’s asked him more than once for notes. Advice, tips, recommendations. He’s given her platitudes, hints and implications that sound a lot more insightful than they actually are, hiding under the gild of his years of experience, his triumphs and his failures, to come across as something undeniable and precious. He almost, almost wishes she’d call him on it, that she’d see through the veneer, but it’s better this way, her taking him at his word. It makes all these things so much easier for everybody. Mike can probably tell, when she shows it to him, even if he doesn’t say as much. Harevey’s sure she wants his help, his validation. This is a team effort.

It’s better this way.

Then comes Monday.

Harvey calls Rachel into his office to review her proposal with him one more time, to walk him through her plan of attack and ask any new questions she’s come up with, or old ones she wants to ask in different ways. She still refuses to explain the source of her boundless confidence, her absolute certainty that she can convince Logan Sanders to do anything at all, much less sacrifice any of his impending capital gains to help out the clutch of soon-to-be ex-employees he’d just as soon throw under the bus.

“You sure you’re ready?” he asks because he has to, even though he knows what she’ll say, and what she won’t.

Looking intently at her proposal, even though she surely knows the whole thing by heart, she nods, mouthing blurred versions of the words through her barely-parted lips and tightening her grip on the page.

“I can do it,” she says. “He owes me.”

That could mean anything. That could mean nothing. It could be an accident that she even said it, it could be about something else entirely.

“Good luck,” he says.

Rising slowly out of her chair, she pauses to remember what she’s meant to do next. Harvey lowers his eyes and listens for the sound of the closing door.

It takes a minute.

\---

The meeting is scheduled for the morning, mainly so Sanders can get it out of the way before he has to deal with anything important. Rachel argues that it’s actually advantageous timing, since he won’t be preoccupied yet with whatever else is on the schedule for today, and Harvey claims that it’s of no real importance; they’re both equally right and wrong, not that it matters much, being that it’s far too late to change, but at least it gives them something to talk about for a few minutes.

She leaves with a spring in her step, and he doesn’t give it another thought until about three hours later when he wonders what might be taking so long.

“Donna,” he says between increasingly useless discovery articles from the Billingsley-Jacobson merger that neither party is going to be particularly pleased with no matter how it turns out, “have you seen Rachel this morning?”

“You mean is she back from Sanders Incorporated yet?” Donna asks, looking over her shoulder with a wry little smile on her face. “She went back to her desk to write up her notes, you want me to call her for you? Or are you going to give her enough time to actually do her job?”

Harvey smirks, feeling fairly generous about it. “Tell her I want her overall impressions before I get her full report.”

“You want to grill her without her notes?”

“I can’t have this thing distracting me all day.”

“If you’ve thought about this case for one minute since she left this morning, I’ll pay for my next Secretary’s Day gift out of my own pocket.”

Harvey laces his fingers behind his head and leans back in his chair. “I’d like to see you prove it.”

“You’re one hell of a guy, Harvey Specter,” Donna says as she picks up her phone. “Be nice.”

Harvey offers a mocking salute, his smile falling as soon as she’s turned away. Tipping his head back, he traces his eyes along the lines in the ceiling, a headache coming on almost instantly as his gaze zeroes in on a small defect casting a particularly dark shadow and his eyes begin to cross.

“Harvey.” Rachel knocks on the door as she walks in, and the whole setup seems kind of pointless.

Harvey drops his hand and blinks at the wall.

“How’d it go?”

“Well,” she says, holding a stuffed file folder to her chest. “It went well. Logan’s interested in the idea, he wants to talk to you about it.”

The ache in his temple begins to pulse again as he looks at her out of the corner of his eye. “It’s your proposal.”

“And I explained that to him,” she says churlishly, “but he insisted on talking to you personally before he signed off on anything.”

It’s not surprising, as these things go. It even makes sense, from a practical point of view. It’s the kind of thing Harvey would recommend his clients to do, if they asked him.

Harvey sighs.

“Have Donna set something up.”

Rachel pauses in a startled sort of way, that deer in headlights look so common to the freshman associates that she really should have outgrown by now. After a moment’s silence, she nods, backing out of the room and closing the door softly behind her.

Harvey looks up at the ceiling.

\---

They have a meeting scheduled. They do. Eleven thirty, Conference Room C. Harvey double checked his calendar.

At eleven twenty-five, Logan Sanders storms the office like an uninvited guest, tossing a wink and a lopsided grin to the receptionist who ignores him with all the indifference of someone who’s both experienced this before and learned to expect it again. Harvey places Rachel on the sofa in front of the bookcases and stands beside his desk with his hands in his pockets, trying to strike the right balance between being completely prepared to start the meeting early and too busy to spare even one minute of his day, much less five.

Sanders doesn’t seem to notice.

“Harvey,” he says, his voice much too loud for his strangely gaunt frame and slightly tilted posture. “Miss Zane tells me you’d like to make me a philanthropic _pitch._ ”

Rachel flinches when he says her name, and Harvey pretends not to have seen.

“You call it whatever helps you get to sleep at night,” he says. “You want to talk about it, I’ll meet you in the conference room.”

Sanders smirks, rolling his shoulders back and trying to make his chest look broader than it is. “And here I thought I was the one in charge of our little arrangement.”

Resting his fingertips on the slick surface of his desk, Harvey takes measured steps toward his chair, making sure to point his gaze out the window and away from everything going on around him.

“I’ve got thirty minutes set aside for you,” he says. “It’s up to you how many of them you want to waste.”

Sanders scoffs, setting his feet shoulder-width apart and puffing his chest out a little more.

“You’ve always been good at cutting through the bullshit, Harvey. I admire that about you.”

Harvey skates his fingers along the edge of the glass.

“Twenty-eight minutes.”

Sanders smiles blandly, making a point to take his time walking back into the hall. Harvey taps the side of his desk and counts to thirty.

He gets to twenty-four before Rachel clears her throat.

“Harvey?”

This is getting a bit silly, isn’t it?

“You ready?”

Rachel stands with her folder clutched her her chest and takes a breath that might be leading up to something, but Harvey turns around and walks out the door and she has no real choice but to follow. It’s just as well; any bracing words or efforts at encouragement won’t be based on anything more than idealism and fantasy.

“Alright, cards on the table,” Harvey says as he stalks into Conference Room C, barely drawing Sanders’ attention from the window where he stands looking out on the city below. “You didn’t come here for me to explain this proposal to you, you came here because you have an angle, so how about you tell me what you want and I’ll tell you how we’re going to get you what you need.”

Sanders puts an obvious effort into chuckling at the indignant demand.

“I appreciate that you have my best interests at heart.”

Bracing his hand on the back of the chair in front of him, Harvey purses his lips and waits for Sanders to turn around.

“And you’re right,” Sanders goes on. “I do know what I want. Your associate offered me a very… _generous_ proposal that it seems I’d be a fool to refuse, but I’m sure you know how these things go. We need to make sure all the i's are dotted and the t’s are crossed.”

Harvey smiles sourly. “And what did you have in mind?”

Finally moving from his post, Sanders steps up to the table and drops his copy of Rachel’s proposal in front of him, the pages falling slightly askew. “First of all, let me just say how magnanimous it is of you to offer to help with job placement for any of these movie rental distributors that I can’t find roles for at my investment firms.”

Harvey’s gaze drops to the pages tossed out between them. The plan is a slew of generous buyouts, isn’t it? Reference letters and severance pay? Isn’t that what they agreed, isn’t that what Sanders is prepared to go along with?

“I’m sure your mail rooms have plenty of openings.”

“Yeah, you would think.” Sanders flips one of the pages over and skims the text on the page underneath. “Maybe I just don’t feel like re-training a bunch of Blockbuster rejects. But I have to say, this part here where you agree to absorb the cost of any wrongful termination lawsuits, that is really going above and beyond.”

He agreed to _what?_

Glancing sharply at Rachel, Harvey bites down on his tongue to keep from snapping at her. She isn’t look at him, anyway; whether it’s because she knows she did wrong or she’s trying to maintain an imposing façade is anyone’s guess.

“We’ll see this case through to the end,” he says, slipping his hands into his pockets and digging his nails into his flesh through the thin fabric. “If any of Gillis’s former employees try to take action against you, we’ll be ready.”

Sanders smiles again. “That’s a step in the right direction. And it’s not that I don’t appreciate the humanitarian angle you’re putting on this whole thing, but I’m a little unclear on how you’re going to handle the actual takeover part of this hostile takeover if Gillis won’t sell his majority shares out of the goodness of his heart.”

That’s the whole point of the proposal, the meat and the bones of it. Did Rachel even _mention_ their plan? Or is Sanders being deliberately obtuse? Harvey wouldn’t put it past him, but at the moment, he wouldn’t put much of anything past her, either.

“We’ll start with a proxy fight,” Harvey says, working to keep his tone even. “Wexler Capital is about to sell off their shares of Gillis, buying those up ought to give you enough clout to start sweet-talking some of the other investors.”

“You’re not interested in a tender offer?” Sanders asks, sounding genuinely curious. Sooner or later, all the tact and delicacy of this business will stop being a game to this kid, but apparently that day’s not going to be today.

“I prefer a more direct approach.”

Sanders nods slowly.

“You’re prepared to go to bat for me?”

Harvey presses his lips together and tries not to look like he wants to hit something.

“That’s my job.”

Sanders nods again.

“Good.”

Stepping back from the table, he fidgets with his hands, finally settling them low on his hips and looking at Harvey as though he’s trying to figure out the rules of the game halfway through a losing streak. Harvey meets his gaze unblinkingly, and Rachel tries to do the same, shifting her weight slightly to the left.

They’re allies in this battle, still. No need to parry for the upper hand.

Finally, Sanders looks down at his watch, putting on a smirk like he’s just made some great discovery.

“Harvey,” he says, “I believe our thirty minutes are up. As always, it’s been a pleasure.”

Harvey clenches his teeth. “Pleasure’s mine.”

Sanders nods. “Miss Zane.”

Rachel nods back, her smile polite and restrained.

“Harvey,” she says as Sanders opens the door, slowing his movements enough that Harvey can’t be sure if he’s holding it for Rachel or merely trying to eavesdrop on their conversation. “I’m going to head back to the bullpen and get to work on the first phase of the proxy fight.”

Harvey looks down at her frostily, but she doesn’t seem to be paying him much attention, caught up in some little world of her own priorities and concerns. Not that it matters; this certainly isn’t the first time he’s had to clean up after some well-meaning rookie’s mistakes.

It’s not as though he hasn’t brought this on himself.

Breathing out, long and low, Harvey grabs the door just before it falls shut and follows Rachel out into the hall where all three of them cluster for one of those awkward moments after they’ve bid their farewells but before they’ve quite parted ways. Sanders throws his shoulders back and tugs on his lapels as they walk in a vaguely staggered formation; Harvey buttons his jacket and lengthens his stride.

“Rachel!”

They all look toward the reception desk at Mike’s cheerful greeting, Rachel’s eyes going a bit wide as she smiles in a funny sort of way that makes Harvey nervous.

“Hey!” she says, speeding up just enough to outpace Sanders on his way to the elevators. “What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood,” Mike says, “I thought I’d come by and say hi.”

Coming to a stop at his side, Rachel reaches to grasp his hand and drop it almost as quickly.

“I wish I’d known you were coming,” she says. “I’ve got a big report to write, I don’t really have time for lunch.”

Harvey frowns, stopping to observe the scene play out from a few feet away. Sure, getting the parameters of their strategy down on paper is important, but whatever rough draft she puts down will be skeletal at best, and he doesn’t have real faith in her capacity to do even that much, given the shit she seems to have pulled so far with this case.

Mike looks down at her hand hanging next to his and sticks his thumbs into his pockets.

“It’s fine,” he says. “I don’t have to stay, I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

Rachel smiles again, her eyes creasing at the corners and her lips stretching across her face.

Harvey looks down at the floor.

There’s a thread loose in the carpeting, a couple of inches of white plastic pulled up from the synthetic backing by careless vacuuming, or an exuberant visitor’s scrambling shoes. If Harvey had a pair of scissors, he’d cut it down to size.

“I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced.”

The silence surrounding them is stilted.

Mike wipes his palm on his jeans.

“Mike Ross,” he says, reaching to shake Logan Sanders’ hand. “I’m Rachel’s husband.”

“Mike Ross,” Sanders repeats. “Of course, Rachel said such nice things about you the other day.”

Mike smiles timidly. “Other day?”

“When she came by my place to make me an offer.”

Harvey’s head snaps up. She didn’t. She wouldn’t. Whatever he’s implying, whatever Mike is supposed to be guessing, it’s a lie. It is. It has to be.

Rachel glares at Sanders and puts her hand on Mike’s arm.

“Logan wants to buy up a company that’s going under,” she says tersely. “I was helping him figure out how to save all of the employees’ jobs after he acquires them.”

Sanders looks down at her, arching his eyebrows cartoonishly high on his forehead, and Harvey takes a step forward, covering the loose thread in the carpet under the sole of his shoe.

“You haven’t told him?” Sanders murmurs, just loud enough that it must be on purpose.

“Told me what?” Mike asks.

Rachel drops her hand.

“Nothing,” she snaps.

“Told me _what?_ ” Mike repeats.

Looking to a spot somewhere around Mike but not quite on him, Rachel twists her face into an appalled expression, her breath coming out uneven as Sanders clicks his tongue and waves them off.

“Nothing,” he says.

Mike looks between them, a furrow in his brow, his confusion, his anger growing without direction, without purpose, the answer to a question none of them are asking, a rallying cry against a confession becoming clearer with every passing second but that he doesn’t want to hear, that he won’t have to believe if they don’t say it. Let’s stay here in the dark, let’s stand still and let our mistakes break themselves down into charcoal and dust that we can cast off into the wind.

Harvey would love for things to be that easy. He really would.

“Rachel,” he says, because this can’t be her fault, not with Mike standing right here. “Rachel, did he do something to you?”

Rachel looks up at him woefully and Harvey wants so badly for her to say yes, telling himself not to feel too sick over it, that it’s nobody’s fault this is the way things have to be. They’ve gotten through everything up to now and they’ll get through this too.

Mike crowds around her, holding himself carefully to keep them from touching.

“Rachel?”

She meets his eyes intently, doing all she can to shut out the rest of the world, to narrow it down to just them. Just her story, her explanation, her defense. It might be enough, if it’s just them.

“We kissed,” she says. “Mike, I am so sorry. We were talking about the takeover, and then he…”

“He what?”

Mike turns to glare over his shoulder, pulling himself out of their little orbit, but Logan has already made his way to the foyer, holding the elevator door open to watch the wreckage.

Rachel shakes her head.

“Mike, I’m so sorry.”

Harvey scowls suddenly as her words fall into line.

“You were talking about the takeover?” he repeats, stepping toward them. “That was nearly a week ago, Rachel, are you saying you’ve had a personal relationship with our client this entire time? It didn’t occur to you that this might be a conflict of interest, this might be something you should _tell_ me?”

“It was nothing!” she cries bitterly. “We don’t have a _relationship_ anymore, he— God, Mike, we kissed, and I left, why are you trying to make this into something more than it is?”

“‘Anymore’?” Mike parrots, pressing forward as she leans away. “What’s that supposed to mean? If this is nothing, why is it so important for you to keep it a secret, why didn’t you tell me about it a week ago?”

“Maybe because she liked it,” Sanders taunts, the elevator beginning to whine at him keeping the door open so long.

“Fuck you,” Mike spits to Sanders’ retreating back as the doors close and the shrill tone dies down.

“ _Mike._ ”

“ _No!_ ” He whirls back to her and for a moment Harvey thinks he’s going to shove her, maybe slap her across the face, but he only stares with his wild eyes and looms closer and closer as she steps back. “Did you fuck him?” he snarls. “Is that it, is that why you wanted to work this case? Is that why you’ve been lying to me?”

“I didn’t!” Her hand rises as though to touch him, maybe try to ground him, just barely too timid to make it all the way across the space between, and she shakes her head. “We— We knew each other, years ago, but this isn’t _about_ that! We kissed, that’s it, it didn’t mean anything!”

Didn’t it?

Maybe not now. Maybe not to you.

His body paralyzed, in rage or hatred, or maybe fear, why not, Mike stands before her, holding himself back with a taut thread about to snap. Rachel looks up at him desperately, needing so badly for him to believe her, to give her this, to forget it ever happened at all.

In an instant, the flip of a switch, the backwards ticking of a clock, his eyes go blank, empty and cold. Harvey’s blood freezes in his veins as Mike steps out of arm’s reach, and watches her.

“Are you done?”

She looks up at him, searching, searching, wanting so badly for things to be any way other than how they are. Any way at all.

He shakes his head.

“It doesn’t change what happened. It doesn’t change the fact that you did it, and you didn’t tell me. Now you’re telling me it didn’t mean anything, but how am I supposed to believe that?” His lips twist into a crooked grin, half of a sneer, and he takes another step back. “You always get what you want, don’t you. We always do what you want, _I_ always do what you want. Whatever you want, it’s always gotta be your way.”

He shakes his head and steps back into the foyer.

“Not this time.”

“Mike!”

Harvey lunges forward, but Rachel is in the way and Mike is too far, pressing the elevator call button and disappearing as Harvey slams his hand against the doors and watches the counter cycle down, down, down, forty, thirty, twenty, and he knows where he’s going, he knows what he’s going to do, even though he shouldn’t, even though he _can’t._

“God _dammit!_ ”

He jabs the call button and turns furiously, and Rachel stares at him, and he doesn’t want to blame her, because surely this isn’t what it seems, surely she wouldn’t do that, not to Mike, but what else could it be? “I’m sorry,” what else could that mean?

“Harvey,” she says, “what am I supposed to do?”

Go after him. Stop him from making a terrible mistake, stop him from doing something he’ll regret. Give him a place to throw his rage, give him a soft target for his anger and then take it all and let it weigh you down until it’s cost you everything you are.

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

The elevator door opens and Harvey storms inside, pushing the button for the lobby.

“Go back to work.”

Rachel watches as the doors close, clutching the folder in her arms to her chest. Harvey jabs the lobby button again.

The car rattles before it begins its descent, and Harvey wipes his hand across his mouth.

Would Mike go after Sanders? He wouldn’t, he couldn’t, it doesn’t make any sense. Sanders will tear Mike to pieces if he confronts him at his office, he’ll destroy him. But Mike was so angry, he was _so angry…_

Harvey shoves past everyone in his way, two people, three and four and five, stumbling out the doors and he’ll run to Sanders’ office, he’ll run there, he’ll stop Mike himself and he’ll fix everything, he’ll fix it all.

The pavement at the bottom of the stairs sends a violent jolt up his leg when he hits it too hard and Harvey grabs the railing to steady himself, breathing too heavy, too shallow, too fast.

Mike is so, so angry. And Mike is hurt, and Mike is scared.

Harvey pulls his phone out of his pocket.

“Donna. Get me Rachel Zane’s home address.”

\---

The building is a five story walk-up, dirty brown brick and a black fire escape that gives the vague impression of having been used a few times before, the paint chipping along the platform and covered in bird shit along the railing. Harvey clears the front stairs in two wide steps and yanks the door handle as though it’ll accomplish anything more than straining the wood; for a second, he looks up at the fire escape ladder, a good fifteen feet away at least, and wonders if he might be able to reach it, to jump off the rail or climb up off the first floor window ledge.

Fuck that, fuck this dump. Harvey reaches out to grab the handle again, pulling as though it’ll change anything, smacking the glass when it won’t open, pounding his fist against it and hoping it’ll crack, or break, or something, let him in, god, just let him in. Desperately flattening his palm against the intercom, he calls four apartments at once, pressing his fingertips down to ring two more because maybe one of these people is that careless, that stupid— Yes, of course they are, of course, the door buzzes and he yanks it open, barreling inside and sprinting up four flights of stairs and pounding on the door to 4B, shouting Mike’s name, turning the doorknob, shoving it open because of course it isn’t locked, of course it isn’t.

“Mike?” he hollers into the dark, looking to the left into an area something like a kitchen, to the right down a narrow corridor. “Mike, where are you?”

Making a wild guess, he opens the door to a dim bathroom, barely big enough for all that fits inside it, and flings back the shower curtain on an empty tub, but no, no, he has to be here, he _has_ to, and Harvey spins on his heel and wrenches open the only door he hasn’t tried, his last option, last chance, and there, sitting on the floor underneath the window, it’s Mike, thank god, _thank god._ He must have heard the door open, he must have heard Harvey call, but he doesn’t say a word, not a word as he pushes himself up off the floor, stomping around the bed, elbowing his way past Harvey toward the hall, and he would’ve made it, too, if the room wasn’t so small, if Harvey didn’t catch him around the chest as he tries to force himself out the door.

“Let go of me!”

“Mike!”

Mike thrashes at him, grasping for the doorframe, and Harvey closes his hands around his shoulders, shoving him back into the bedroom to stumble against the bed and snarl back at him, his narrowed eyes shining in the sliver of light piercing through the break in the window shade.

“What?” he says, his voice already cracking. “What do you want?”

“I want to help you!”

Mike looks at him and away, his gaze unfocused, his shoulders, his back trembling, his chest closed, everything about him blocked off, turned in, so unlike the man Harvey thinks he knows.

I want to tell you everything is going to be okay. I want to tell you you’ll get through it, I want to tell you you’ll be stronger on the other side. I want to tell you to keep going even though you don’t think you can.

I want you to be more than I ever was.

Harvey reaches out to grab Mike’s arms, to shake some sense into him, make him believe everything Harvey never could, please, please, I don’t know how to make this any better, and Mike thrashes again, twisting to pull himself out of his grip, but Harvey holds on, trying to pull him closer as Mike claws at his chest, so desperate for his freedom.

“Get off!”

“Mike!” Harvey tightens his grip. “I know, okay? I know how you feel. I do.”

“ _No!_ ”

His legs seem to go out from under him as Mike falls to his knees, shoving against Harvey again, pushing himself back against the bed, his head into his trembling hands. Harvey drops hesitantly to his knees, reaching out for Mike’s hand, his face, anyplace he can touch his skin, anything he can find to ground him, to bring him back from where he’s gone.

I’ve been there. I’ve been there for so long.

Harvey crawls across the floor and sits beside Mike, sliding his arm behind his back and urging him closer, his head down to Harvey’s shoulder, resting on his chest. Mike pulls away until he doesn’t, until he grips at the starchy lapels of Harvey’s suit, huddling against his side, and Harvey holds him tight, letting him take his time figuring out how to breathe again.

“I know,” Harvey murmurs. “I know.”

The curtains shift a little, and the light blinks in and out. The apartment smells of ironwork and overturned dirt.

Mike shakes his head and presses closer.

Harvey sighs and holds him tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Hey. Hey, hey. I’m right here. You can tell me. What’s going on?”  
> “I can’t. I can’t.”  
> “Rachel, stop. You can.”  
> “I don’t, I don’t deserve you.”  
> “What are you talking about? Rachel. Hey.”  
> “Logan and I kissed.”  
> “What?”  
> “We were just talking. And then, he…”  
> “He what?”  
> “Mike, please. I’m so sorry. Mike, no, please. Please. It didn’t mean anything. Wait.”  
> —Mike and Rachel, “We’re Done” (s04e07)
> 
> “This is how you handle losing?”  
> “I’m not here about Gillis Industries.”  
> “Oh, are you going to fight me?”  
> “You stay the hell away from Rachel.”  
> “Well, that's up to her. But if she does come back here, it won’t be to tell me to stay away. I don’t know what she told you. But she let it go on a long time. And she didn’t just like it, she loved it.”  
> —Logan Sanders and Mike, “We’re Done”
> 
> Aside from the brief mention of “Wexler” (which is not defined as any specific type of corporation), the tactic employed here is not remotely akin to the vaguely explained method Sanders uses in canon to initiate the hostile takeover of Gillies Industries, but to be fair, Harvey and Mike aren’t on opposite sides and trying to thwart-slash-help each other in this version of the narrative.
> 
> Given that Mike is a struggling artist and Rachel is a junior associate, I placed them in a one bedroom apartment at 314 West 19th Street (current rental price $1,000/month) rather than my usual of [The Corinthian](https://streeteasy.com/building/the-corinthian) (average rental price $4,818/month).


	9. Chapter 9

Mike doesn’t say much, in the end.

Harvey lets him sit in silence, lets him cry all over the expensive wool of his jacket and pull at him until he’s accidentally undone Harvey’s tie and the top two buttons of his shirt. He lets him get up after he’s finished, lets him walk across the hall without a word to the bathroom too small to be anything more than exactly what it is, and he sits on the bedroom floor and listens to the water run as Mike turns on the shower and shuts the door. He waits until Mike comes back with a towel in his hand, and he turns around when Mike opens the closet for a pair of jeans and a heavy purple hoodie that looks too big on him but probably isn’t, wouldn’t be if he was standing up straight.

It’s a little after five, when everything’s finally settled down. Harvey stands in front of the television as Mike goes to the refrigerator, idling for a minute before he walks away empty handed and lies down on the sofa instead.

Harvey wants to go to him, to ask him what’s wrong, even though he thinks he knows, to tell him everything’s going to be okay, even though he knows it might not. He wants to fall asleep on the floor and wake up in another life, another place and time where things are so much easier, where they aren’t the people they are who do the things they do, and they can all take the chances they shouldn’t have missed the first time around.

Remember that gallery? Remember the gold silk on the walls, remember the sticky summer heat? Remember your hand in mine? Remember how happy we used to be?

No, neither do I.

And what am I supposed to do now? Can you tell me? Do you know?

No, it’s okay. Neither do I.

The silence is long, bitter and stale.

Mike rolls onto his side, and Harvey thinks for a moment that his eyes are closed until he sees the barest shine between his lashes, the sliver of blue and black too thin to see much of anything clearly, too narrow to look anywhere but down.

Harvey steps closer, close enough to touch.

Mike opens his eyes, and the silence is sharp, baited and cold.

“Don’t leave.”

The words are so fragile, so small, that Harvey thinks he might ask him to repeat himself so he can hear them again, so he can be sure they are what he thinks they are. He doesn’t, though. He wouldn’t. He won’t. What he will do, what he does is reach out to lay his hand on Mike’s head, running his fingers through his hair, stroking his thumb over the shell of Mike’s ear as Mike lowers his eyes again, looking down, looking at nothing.

Harvey sits on the floor and rests his back against the couch.

I’ll be here when you wake up.

\---

It might be nice, if everything could be easy. If he could stay, and that could be that.

He doesn’t expect anything. A call, a text, anything like that. Mike needs his space; Harvey understands. Mike doesn’t owe him anything, Harvey doesn’t have the right to make any demands. Rachel doesn’t speak to him much either, these days; he restricts her access to all things Sanders to the bare minimum required to do her job, and she does her part to keep her distance. He asks Donna, once, if they’re doing alright, Mike and Rachel, which is a phenomenally stupid question that she answers so cryptically that he isn’t sure whether she knows the answer and won’t say, or doesn’t and hopes he can’t tell.

He could help, maybe. If Mike wanted to talk about it.

Maybe not.

Harvey makes a point of throwing himself behind the Sanders case, snatching up the Wexler shares and researching every major investor in Gillis’s company from their alma mater down to their favorite soda pop, making calls and sending emails and leaving messages with every single one except Edward Gomez, an ornery bastard who owns more than his fair share of stock but who definitely won’t be swayed until the takeover is all but guaranteed, with or without his vote. Jessica applauds Harvey’s initiative and asks if he needs any help, and he thinks about asking for another associate except that he doesn’t much feel like explaining what’s wrong with the one he already has. On the off chance that she doesn’t already know.

Instead he spends late nights at the office, setting up meeting after meeting with as many major investors as will return his calls, sending Sanders copy-pasted form letters to keep him in the loop just enough to make him feel involved. The letters go unanswered, every one of them, and Harvey figures it’s just as well. There’s nothing to worry about, after all. He’ll win the takeover, Sanders will go home happy, and they’ll promise never to speak to one another again.

Mike doesn’t owe him a goddamn thing.

It might be nice to hear is voice, is all.

\---

Mornings come disconnected from afternoons in such a way that he doesn’t really notice it until he does, until it’s more normal than not for every day to stretch out long enough to fill two or three. Harvey loses track of how long it’s been since he stopped waiting for Mike to get in touch. A call, a text, an email. Anything would do.

It can’t have been long. Maybe about a week; he’s only done one load of laundry.

Not that that’s important when he looks up from his desk and Mike is standing right outside, looking through the glass walls as though Harvey is the only other person in the universe. Maybe not the only person, but the only one who matters.

It’s not a bad feeling.

Donna looks between them uncertainly; Harvey wonders if she’s going to wave Mike in, but as it turns out, it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t stop him when he goes on his own, which amounts to more or less the same thing. Harvey closes his laptop and stands up from his desk as Mike walks through the door, coming toward him at a purposeful, stalking sort of pace, and for a moment Harvey wonders if he’s going to kiss him, just to be defiant. He might; he could. Harvey would forgive him for it.

He doesn’t, but Harvey thinks he wouldn’t have minded.

Mike stops in front of him and smiles.

“Thank you for everything.”

Thank you for stepping into my life, and walking all over it. Thank you for knocking down the house where I live, and showing me all the rot in the foundation. Thank you for reminding me that no matter how much I do, no matter how hard I work, my life will always be full of all the mistakes I’ve made and all the ones coming that I won’t recognize until it’s much too late.

Thank you for showing me I might be someone worth standing up for.

Harvey smiles back.

“You sure about that?” he says wryly. “Things seemed to be going just fine before I showed up.”

Mike laughs through his parted lips, looking away from Harvey’s face, out the window over his shoulder into the shining sun, and Harvey raises his eyebrows a little and slips his hands into his pockets, for lack of something better.

“What are you going to do now?”

The laughter fades away in a breath, and Mike sighs.

“Rachel and I are splitting up,” he says. “She says she wants to keep trying, but I’m not sure if she really believes that or she just thinks she’s supposed to, I think she knows it’s not going to work out.”

Harvey adjusts his feet, angling his body a few degrees away in case Mike wants a little bit of space.

“You guys had a good run.”

Mike shakes his head, his eyes narrowed in the light.

“We did our best,” he says. “We just didn’t want to admit it when we ran out of road.”

People can get used to anything, can’t they? Even that cutting gravel can start to feel pretty familiar, after awhile.

Harvey nods.

“She and Logan going to take a shot at anything?”

Mike’s smile is easygoing in a way Harvey doesn’t remember seeing before, unburdened from the weight of all he’s carried on his back, every day he’s spent struggling to break down the walls he took so long to build up around himself.

“I don’t know,” he says. “They might. Hey,” he turns his head to meet Harvey’s gaze again, “do me a favor?”

Harvey hums softly, and Mike’s smile dims a bit.

“Don’t take it out on her,” he says. “It’s not her fault we turned out like this.”

We’ve all hurt each other so badly in the name of doing the right thing. We all tried our best, even when it was hard, even when we didn’t know any better.

Harvey sucks air in through his teeth.

“I’ll take care of her.”

Mike’s eyes begin to drift again before he brings them back to Harvey, his smile gone now even though the calmness, the peace of it all remains. The certain tranquility that comes with being sure of a decision he never thought he’d make, taking a chance he’s not giving himself any choice but to follow through.

“Thank you.”

This is the end of something inevitable. This is the start of something unpredictable.

Harvey moves to close the space between them.

“You’re welcome.”

Mike smiles.

“You know I’ve gotta leave, right?”

This is the future we’ve been marching towards for as long as I can remember. The bridge we’ve got to cross, I can finally see it in front of me, even if the shore is too far away.

Harvey reaches for Mike’s hand and holds it for a moment.

“Where are you going to go?”

Looking down, Mike threads their fingers together and takes them apart, running his thumb over Harvey’s knuckles.

“Not sure,” he says. “I think I have to get out of the city, but after that… I don’t know what to tell you. Somewhere no one knows me, somewhere I can start from scratch. Somewhere where the only person I can disappoint is myself, maybe that’ll take some of the pressure off.”

Harvey laughs and holds Mike’s hands a little tighter.

“I think your grandmother would be proud of you.”

Of course she would. Of course.

You believe it too, don’t you?

Mike nods.

“I hope so.”

So this is it, then. This is how the story ends? Two wandering souls who stepped in to save each other at just the right moment, and now it’s time to start walking again. Time to wipe clean the histories we built behind us, time to try something new.

Harvey reaches up to clasp Mike’s shoulder.

Don’t we deserve something more?

“I’m not trying to stop you,” he says. “But do you think you can do something for me first?”

Mike blinks as the light in his eyes suddenly dims, falling behind some building or other on the horizon.

“I can try.”

Anything is possible.

Harvey smiles faintly.

“Come by my place tonight.”

Pausing a moment, Mike puts on a smirk that doesn’t suit him terribly well and shifts his weight to one side.

“White wine and rose petals in the sheets?”

Harvey shakes his head, and Mike’s smirk fades much faster than it arrived.

“No.” He steps closer again, almost enough to touch without trying. “No. I figure we deserve one honest night before you go, that’s all. Give you something to remember me by.”

Just think about it, please. It would be a kind thing for you to leave behind.

His eyes soften as Mike reaches up to lay his hand against Harvey’s face, running his thumb underneath his cheekbone before he pulls them together.

This moment isn’t for setting things right, for fixing all that’s been wrenched apart. This moment isn’t for pretending that we’re made of starlight and stone. No, this is the moment when we remember that we’re not invincible, but that doesn’t mean we get to stop trying.

Harvey sets his hands on Mike’s waist and holds him close.

Remember me kindly, and I’ll try to do the same for you.

Mike leans back with a smile on his lips.

“If I promised I was coming back,” he says, “would you wait for me?”

If I told you that you’re something special, would you listen? Would you believe me when I say?

Harvey smiles, too.

“There’s a first time for everything.”

And a second, and a third.

The sunlight casts angled shadows over his throat as Mike nods slowly, and he sets his chin on Harvey’s shoulder, wrapping his arms around his back.

This world won’t be gentle with us, but I’ll be there to hold you when you’re falling. I’ll pick you up when you’re down. We’ll find our way home.

I know it.


End file.
